Lost and Found
by Celesma
Summary: In the aftermath of Lost July, two wayward souls will find one another – and themselves.
1. Prologue

A/N: This story is categorized as "Spiritual," which means that religious themes play a pretty important role throughout. I'm not one to beat people over the head with my beliefs, but if that bothers you in any way, you probably won't enjoy reading this.

This is meant to be a multi-chaptered companion to "While I Was Yet Lost," a Wolfwood-centric one-shot. (You do **not** have to read that story in order to understand this one.) I've been mulling over the possible aftermath of Lost July for years now, but was unable to come up with a concrete storyline until now. Based on the anime version of events, obviously, because if it followed the manga, um... well... everyone would be dead, and that wouldn't make for much of a story, now would it? :O

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><p><em>"If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish." <em>– Matthew 18:12-14

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><p>Why this happened, I cannot explain.<p>

Why write the script with such heartache and pain?

Could there not have been an easier way? – Mercy Me, "My Heart Will Fly"

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><p><strong>Lost and Found<strong>

**Prologue**

_Stardate: July 21, 104 AF_

Miriam Shepherd was an early riser. Part of this was due to the fact that she often had trouble sleeping – even ten years after the Bad Days, she still woke up to drenched bedsheets on most nights – and part of it was because it gave her extra time to devote to prayers before setting about her business for the day. Once she had completed three repetitions of the wooden rosary that hung around her neck, she put on coffee. Extra sugar, no cream.

Today looked to be especially promising, she thought. It was Sunday, and in a few hours she'd finally get to meet with the kids she would be teaching during the sermons, as well as get in some on-the-job training for her upcoming position as a church secretary. Twenty-six years old and fresh out of the monastery, Miriam wasn't sure what to expect when she first boarded the sand steamer for July City. She'd been fighting for two years now to remain within the shelter of those cloistered walls, but Sister Anna had been adamant that it was time for Miriam to go out and get reacquainted with the world – that the Lord, in fact, was calling her to it. Miriam thought it had less to do with the Lord and more to do with Anna's desire to keep Miriam from rising to any position of prominence among the other nuns, but she kept her mouth shut on that point. And now here she was.

Some concessions had to be made, of course. In exchange for agreeing to teach the children and field phone calls at the July Church of Discipleship, the clergy had had to convert the church's spacious basement into a dwelling place for her. Miriam didn't suffer from agoraphobia, exactly, but she needed to be able to retreat somewhere if memories of the Bad Days began resurfacing. Places without windows were a good first step towards recreating the feelings of security that the monastery's impressively high walls had afforded her. Also, they introduced her to coffee, which left her wondering if she hadn't perhaps misjudged this whole business after all.

She had to confess that she was excited to see the children. No children had been permitted to visit the monastery during the ten years that she'd lived there; as a result, she'd almost forgotten what they were like. She hoped her positive memories weren't just a matter of her being forgetful or sentimental. She hoped she'd be good to them, full of patience and understanding. She hoped, she hoped –

Miriam Shepherd didn't know it yet, but what she hoped didn't matter. In less than two hours, her entire world would end.

* * *

><p>She felt it before she saw it: a feeling like her soul was being dragged out of her body, punctuated by minute tremors of her arms and legs, and a smell that reminded her of <em>electricity,<em> strangely enough. She had been standing outside, enjoying the breeze and open air that she'd – admittedly – been avoiding for far too long, when these bizarre feelings suddenly surfaced. At first she thought she was subconsciously evoking memories of the Bad Days, but was proven utterly wrong a few seconds later, when the chapel roof was suddenly ripped from its foundations as rudely and violently as if it had fallen into the hands of a petulant giant.

The July Church of Discipleship stood on a moderately high outcropping of rock, which had moments ago given her a pleasant view of the open sky and the tops of buildings too numerous to count. Miriam watched, horror-stricken, as it transformed into a scene from a nightmare: the buildings began crumbling away into dust and nothingness, and from somewhere within the flying mountains of debris that now concealed the city, an enormous beam of light shot straight up towards the suns. In the same instant, the sky assumed a blood-red tint – a color that she would soon find to be permanent over the weeks of tribulation that awaited her.

Miriam stood there, too stunned even to move or try to get away, before a raw wind swept up towards the chapel, cutting her to the bone. The next moment, she found herself pinned against the side of the chapel by the forceful gusts, forced to watch as a giant sheet of white light spread out from the beam, bathing the entire city in an otherworldly glow, in –

_Heaven's light,_ she thought._ Is this the Rapture?_ She didn't believe in such things, but moments ago she hadn't believed that July would be brought to its knees by such an unidentifiable force as this, either. Then all thought ceased as the light fell upon her trembling form, and she instantly fell unconscious.

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><p>It wasn't the light of Heaven. No force from the Lord's realm could have produced the hell she was living in now.<p>

Miriam awoke several hours later, bloody and bruised, but alive. She arose slowly, looked down at her torn clothes in trepidation. Despite the terrible memories they were beginning to inspire her to recall in vivid detail, she wasn't hysterical. Instead, she just felt numb.

She surveyed the church with lifeless eyes. The essential structure remained unchanged – in fact, the entire face was still there, the large cross perfectly preserved upon its crown like a tiara – but the roof had vanished entirely. Walking down the pews, she found that the wooden floors and walls had held up well, as had the grand piano and altar. Her home was still there, intact but for the overturned books and furniture.

If God had caused this, she reasoned, He sure had been capricious. Still, she grasped the tiny wooden cross around her neck even tighter as she continued to investigate the extent of the damage.

The electricity still worked, but that was to be expected; being located up on a rock, the church had to rely on a fuel-based generator for power, which was also located underneath the building. If she didn't use the lights and only cooked and bathed when she absolutely had to, she could probably get by for two weeks. Actually, she probably didn't need to cook at all; she had plenty of canned food stored down here.

It frightened Miriam a bit to realize how pragmatic she was becoming in such a short time. Still, she couldn't dwell on that. She tried the radio next. It worked – that is, it turned on – but all she got was static. Whatever had destroyed the city must have also taken out the satellite that had been floating above the desert planet for more than a century now. She grabbed her satchel, stuffing it full to bursting with food and bottled water, then went upstairs.

She walked out of the church, looked down at the city. She almost couldn't comprehend what she seeing: so great had been the destruction. Smashed buildings littered the landscape in no diminutive number, smoke rising from the few buildings that remained standing. She tried to see if there were any people down there, but the smoke was too thick. Still, she thought, that light hadn't disintegrated her, so it stood to reason that there were plenty of survivors down there.

She picked her way down the rock, taking care to avoid the trading stalls that now lay in splintered ruins here and there. The destruction had occurred early enough in the morning that nobody had been manning them. At length, she found herself near the sand steamer station that she herself had arrived at only a week ago. A cacophony of voices – some screaming, some crying, and some lobbing furious curses – accosted her hearing. Her first instinct was to turn around, run back the way she came, but then she would be no good to anyone at all. Miriam pressed on, wishing she'd remembered to take a gun with her.

The sight of an enormous crowd greeted her as she turned a corner; they were gathered in front of a recently arrived sand steamer, and they packed the area so tightly that there were people inside undoubtedly being suffocated to death. Miriam screamed and drew back – she couldn't help it, it was so much like _Then!_ – but she was soon swept up into the sea of humanity. The arms and legs of hundreds of nameless, faceless people jostled her, bruising her already injured body, as she was alternately dragged and pushed closer to where the massive steamer was situated. Through her rapidly blurring vision, she could see the captain of the steamer calling out to the mob in a terrified voice, trying to restore order among them.

"Please, listen to me! We don't have the room to board all of you. If the women and children could just file inside in an orderly manner, we'll take them on the first trip back. Then – "

Someone lobbed a rock at him. It struck him in the head, drawing blood, and he fell from his perch on the steamer, disappeared into the mob. Some of the people detached themselves and began shoving their way through the steamer's only open entrance. Miriam called out to them, trying to make herself heard over the howling voices.

"Stop this, all of you! If you'd just stop and think for a minute, we could resolve this peacefully. I've brought food and water. If anyone has a need, anyone at all – "

It was she_ tried_ to say, what she so desperately _wanted_ to say, but she just kept screaming instead. Someone ripped the bag of food from her shoulder, but she took no notice of it. She could hear bones crunching as people were trampled underfoot, could hear children crying as they were forcibly cut off from their parents. For a split second she came face-to-face with the pastor of the July Church of Discipleship, waving a gun and screaming furiously with the best of them. Suddenly it didn't matter to her that these people were desperate and afraid, that they were only bringing about their own destruction by fighting to board the steamer. She was experiencing two traumas at once, and if she didn't escape, that hideous strength would destroy her –

She continued to be buffeted about like a rag doll, until finally, mercifully, she found herself slammed into a small opening on the side of the steamer's waiting station. Curling herself into a ball – or into as much of one as she could manage – the nun gripped her rosary, the edges pushing into her palm and growing damp with her sweat. Closing her eyes tightly, she feverishly muttered the prayer that had seen her through previous panic attacks. It was a simple prayer, nothing like the elaborate rosary prayers she chanted each morning, but it had always been enough to sustain her during those terrible times of misery and need.

_"The Lord is my shepherd – I shall not want – He makes me lie down in green pastures – "_

She finished the Psalm, then started all over again – and again, and again, and again, until finally she passed out, slumped inside the nook that was barely big enough to contain her body, as the inhabitants of July City continued to tear each other apart.

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><p>AN: So, uh... yeah. My female OC is a nun with post-traumatic stress disorder. That's not a Mary Sue, right? Not to mention that there's zero romance in this story, anyway.

Also, I'm aware of the distinction between sisters and nuns, but kept them one and the same in this story for the purposes of simplicity, and because that's what most people are used to. Gunsmoke seems to have adopted a sort of religious mish-mash, anyway (see: Nicholas D. Wolfwood, the priest who can't decide if he's Catholic or Episcopalian).


	2. Seek and Ye Shall Find

**Lost and Found**

**Chapter One: Seek and Ye Shall Find**

Miriam came to gradually. The crevice she'd been inadvertently ushered into offered very little in the way of space, but sleeping comfortably wasn't exactly on the nun's list of high priorities right now. Her vision still bleary, she peered out intently into the clearing that had once been occupied by the howling mob, trying to pierce the veil of fog that obscured it.

As the dark shadows began resolving themselves into identifiable shapes, she found herself wishing she hadn't tried at all.

While she had been unconscious, the sand steamer station had been quickly refashioning itself into a graveyard. Those who had not had the fortune of securing a ride on the steamer had proceeded to destroy one another, and their bodies littered the landscape like so much garbage. In the same instant that the nun caught sight of the bodies, she could also smell them: the stench left her gasping for breath, her windpipe drawing up to the size of a pin. With a herculean effort, Miriam stumbled out of the crevice, and then breathing became utterly impossible as she vomited. Once the sand had been painted with the contents of her stomach, she gave herself a few minutes to recover before moving on.

As she passed by the rows of bodies, she surveyed each of them with a heavy heart. There were so many of them... an elderly man, his cane lying in splintered pieces on his prone body. A young man and woman, a couple, their arms linked about one another in death. A little girl, still clutching a favorite toy in her filthy hands.

Miriam felt hot tears sting her eyes. These people had been terrified and desperate – as much as she herself now felt – and they had died so needlessly. Swallowing her sobs, she forced her eyes to linger over each body. Someone might still be alive...

_None of them are alive, and you know it. After all, this isn't a new sight for you, is it? You've seen bodies before – dozens and dozens of them. You know the difference between one who has passed on and one who is still alive..._

"Stop it," she said out loud, gripping the crown of her head. The voice needed to be silenced, or otherwise she would begin _remembering_ things, and the last thing she needed right now was to succumb to another bout of hysteria. In her mind, she was reciting the Psalm again, and peace – or a paltry semblance of it – resumed.

She wondered if she should attempt a mass burial, but it would take days to commit all of the city's fallen inhabitants to the earth, and she didn't think she would be able to handle touching them, anyway. Instead, she knelt in the dirt and fingered her rosary, offering up prayers on their behalf. _Lord, grant those have died the joy of Your presence. Look upon them with love and mercy as You welcome them into Your kingdom.  
><em>

_And remember those who are still alive._

When she returned to the church, she sat in the dark of her new home and wept.

* * *

><p>Two days later, she went back out. She felt both disappointed and relieved when no one else showed up at the chapel. During times of crisis, she knew, people often went to the church first to try and make sense of things, to seek comfort and guidance from a spiritual authority. She knew hers wasn't the only church in July City – and she herself was no spiritual authority, for that matter – but she reasoned that <em>someone<em> must have thought to pay a visit by now. Her heart plummeted into her bowels as she forced herself to acknowledge that there were far fewer survivors than she'd first conjectured. Still, she wasn't dissuaded from seeking them out wherever she could.

She ventured into the city's jewelry district, where casinos and skyscrapers now lay in smoking ruins, their perimeters drawn in lines of ash. Miriam marveled as she tried to reconstruct the area's former glory, eventually giving up as her imagination yielded only vague images of neon rainbows of light and dark, moody structures that stretched towards the heavens like the Tower of Babel. The nun had assembled another bag of canned food and bottled water, remembering to pack a first aid kit as well.

She'd also remembered to take her gun with her. The monastery apparently hadn't realized the monumental irony when they issued the weapon to her upon her departure. Although they never said so, she knew their reasoning was that _thou shalt not kill_ did not mean _thou shalt not kill in self-defense._ She didn't protest, however. As opposed as she was to killing, she felt she could do it if she had to, if only to protect herself from a repeat of the Bad Days. If something like that ever happened to her again, Miriam knew she would never be able to survive it.

She was just passing under a set of rusted-out skyrails when the ground beneath her began to shake. Her gaze instinctively flew up to the rails, but then she remembered that it was impossible for any of the small train carriages that had once been used to transport people across the city to be operating under these conditions. A low grumbling sound, like the exhalations of a dragon that had been interrupted from its slumber, fell on the tepid air.

Miriam felt a deep fear grip her heart just then: one that was different from the usual low-level dread she'd been experiencing ever since she left the monastery. She found herself utterly immobile, her limbs frozen in place, and her mouth worked soundlessly.

She had to hide. She knew that much. Whatever was coming her way was bad. Really bad. She could tell by now that the sounds – which had taken only a few seconds to increase by several decibels – were those of motorcycle engines being gunned ruthlessly. Whoever these people were, it was guaranteed that they were going to have the advantage of speed on their side.

The noises were getting louder now. _Move, you fool!_ she commanded herself, and that seemed to do the trick. Knowing she didn't have time to try and flee the area altogether, Miriam dove behind what seemed the best means of protection at the moment: a large steel door that had been ripped off its hinges, probably from a nearby casino safe. For a moment it swayed dangerously as she tried to position herself behind it, but at length it settled into a more stable angle that offered her a view of the approaching riders.

_This must be what Frodo and the other hobbits felt when they heard the Black Riders coming, _she thought, smiling for the first time since the onset of the disaster. It was wry and obviously strained, but what the hell: she'd take it. She retreated further behind the listing sheet of steel, listened closely to try and judge the speed with which the motorcyclists were approaching.

The bikers did not arrive on the scene so much as _explode_ onto it, the swell of their vulgar, discordant laughter equaling the roar of the behemoth vehicles they commandeered. Headlights scorched the sky as though they were tongues of flame, and as the harsh yellow light washed over every object in Miriam's immediate vicinity, the nun found herself thanking God that she was able to hide from its revealing glare. The motorcyclists, for their parts, continued to flood the area with their numbers, their gleeful cackles not diminishing in the least.

There were about twenty of them, all told: all of them male, and in their teens. Their hair was unkempt and savage, their faces festooned with unidentifiable markings of all different colors; and as more and more of them filled the area underneath the skyrails, their tires chewing up sand and launching small avalanches of dirt and rocks, Miriam was struck with sudden understanding. _It's a gang,_ she thought. _It's only been a few days, and they've already begun forming gangs. And they're only children._ Nevertheless, it didn't lessen her fear one jot. She felt there was something significant about their ages – some crucial fact she was missing – but she couldn't really put her finger on it.

And then, with as much demented fanfare as when they'd first arrived, the motorcyclists were gone, trailers of smoke following on their heels.

Miriam waited for ten minutes, then crept out from her hiding place. _I hope I never encounter them again,_ she thought, but she felt the chances of that to be highly unlikely. Even more unlikely to come true was the hope that, if she _did_ run into them again, there'd be another place for her to hide.

Miriam tried not to dwell on that as she walked home, one hand clinging to the strap of her satchel, the other wrapped firmly around the barrel of the gun that she kept hidden under her clothes.

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><p>She found her first survivor a week later. Rising early in the morning – or at least she was pretty sure it was morning; while the constantly red sky gave no indication of the time of day, her body could be relied on to wake up at the correct time – she had showered and changed her clothes for the second time since the disaster. Then she picked up the satchel of food and set out on another search for people.<p>

This time she found herself wandering far away from the church, into an area that she didn't recognize at all. She had a map of the city that Sister Anna had given her for when she first settled in, so she knew she could find her way back if she really needed to, but she didn't like being this far away from home. After about five hours of walking, she was treated to a very unusual sight: two giant marble pillars, their bases resting on ruined buildings opposite each other, had crossed to form an X-shaped shadow. As she drew closer, she caught sight of the person sitting in the deepest section of shadow, against one of the buildings.

The person was clothed in tattered rags: knees drawn up tightly to the chest, head bowed. She had no way of discerning the person's gender or age; that would require her to get closer. For a moment she stood just outside the perimeter of shadows, undecided, then resolutely put one foot forward and entered.

She approached the curled-up figure – whoever they were, they were stiff as a board and caked under three layers of dirt, but definitely alive – and addressed them tentatively.

"Hello? Are you all right?"

Silence. Miriam stiffened. Maybe they were dead after all... still, she pressed on.

"Do you need medical assistance? Are you hungry, thirsty? I'm looking for survivors to take back with me to the church on the hill. I figure we can stay there for a while, either until help comes or we figure out a solution ourselves. I – "

She shrunk back, terrified, when a male voice replied. "Don't waste your time here. Move on."

Miriam frowned in spite of her fear. Her heart was beating very hard now, and perspiration dotted her forehead, but she managed to ignore it. _Alone with a man –_ "What are you talking about? I came down here to help people like you."

"I don't want to be helped. Go away."

_Believe me, there's nothing I want to do **more** than go away,_ Miriam thought, but she persisted. "Don't be ridiculous. What are you going to do? Just sit here until you die of starvation?"

"It's no concern of yours." His voice was laced with bitterness, but she thought she could also detect a touch of childishness there. Miriam couldn't help smiling a little, the fear draining out of her body by slow degrees.

"Well, I don't plan on leaving anytime soon, so you can just settle for having some company while you're dying." She sat down on the dusty ground across from him, still maintaining a safe distance. She was struck by sudden inspiration. "Hey, I'm a nun, you know. Maybe I can give you your last rites or something!" She laughed at her own joke, although she knew it probably wasn't funny. After all, the other nuns had never been too demure to tell her that her jokes were terrible.

The stranger grunted in reply.

"What's your name?"

He was silent.

"Are you even going to look at me?"

She was rewarded with even more silence. Miriam sighed, began laying out the ingredients for a picnic lunch on the ground. _If you consider canned peas and half a loaf of bread picnic staples,_ she thought wryly. "Well, I've been wandering around for a while and I'm pretty hungry, so I hope you don't mind if I eat here." She produced a can opener and sliced the lid off the can of peas, then dug in with obvious enjoyment.

The stranger continued to say nothing in the ten minutes it took her to polish off the food. Miriam sighed again, drained the canteen of water she had brought with her. She was feeling pretty full now. She wished she hadn't eaten all that food. What if she needed to make a quick getaway? ...And yet, she was growing more and more possessed of the feeling that she had absolutely nothing to fear from this man.

"You really can't tell me your name?"

He didn't say anything for a minute, and she despaired that he was ever going to speak to her again, when suddenly he lifted his head slightly. The strip of filthy cloth that had been concealing his hair and eyes fell away, though the rest of his face remained hidden. The nun couldn't be sure of his hair color – blond, maybe? – as it was dirty and matted. It was his eyes, however, that arrested her. They were green and clear and beautiful.

"I don't know what my name is," he said, and his tone was no longer hostile. "I don't know anything about myself, or what's happened to this city, or why I'm even here. I'm... I'm lost." He bent his head again, but not to hide from her gaze. He seemed to be withdrawing into himself, trying unsuccessfully to recall the details of his past.

Miriam's heart ached for him. There had been a Time when she felt the same way: lost. It was only her faith that had rescued her from despair and eventual suicide – the sweet release of death she'd longed for all those Years – but now was no time to start preaching at him. Besides, she didn't know his circumstances, the life he'd led up to this point. All she could really do, the nun concluded, was be there for him.

"First things first," she said gently. "Your name. Do you remember anything at all?"

The stranger returned her gaze forlornly. "I remember _a_ name, but it's not mine. I know that much."

"It'll have to do for now," she said. "When you have a name – even a false name – you at least know that you're real. That you exist." She smiled at him. "And then you're one step closer to finding yourself."

He regarded her uncertainly. "Alex," he said at last.

"And I'm Miriam," she said. "Sister Miriam Shepherd, to be exact."

They continued to stare at one another, unsure of how to advance the dialogue they'd begun. Then Alex's stomach rumbled loudly, startling them both.

"When's the last time you've eaten?" Miriam asked, concerned.

Alex's eyes grew blank. "Oh, that's right. You don't remember..." Miriam opened her bag and placed it between them. "Take whatever you want," she said.

For long moments Alex stared at the bag, as if unable to discern exactly what he was looking at. Then one arm emerged from the bundle of rags he was swathed in, supported his body as he leaned forward on his knees. As the rags fell to the ground, exposing the rest of his face as well as the strange black suit he wore underneath, Miriam noticed two things.

One: He was quite young, probably only a few years younger than her.

Two: He only had one arm.

She wisely made no comment about the missing arm. Best not to make him feel uncomfortable while he was eating. Still on his knees, Alex dragged the bag closer to him. Before reaching in, however, he gave her an apologetic look. "Thank you, Miriam."

"Oh..." She was surprised, but managed to say: "You're welcome, Alex."

She watched as he rustled around in the satchel for a few seconds, pulled out a package of powdered donuts. Ripping off the plastic with his teeth, he proceeded to stuff the donuts – two at a time – in his mouth.

Miriam smiled. "You like those, huh?"

"I..." Alex struggled to talk between bites. "Yeah, I do."

"So now I know two things about you. Your name may or may not be Alex, and you like donuts."

"And I only have one arm," he added, voicing her unspoken thought.

Miriam's voice became solemn. "Could you have lost your other arm during the destruction?"

"Well..." Alex finished the package in record time, then went looking for another. Turning up nothing, he decided to slake his thirst instead. He popped open a can of lemonade – again, using his teeth. Miriam thought they were going to sustain permanent damage if he carried on this way. "That's what I thought, initially. But if that's true, then it must be buried deep within the rubble, because I never found it." He looked at her with large, scared eyes. "It also doesn't explain how I'm not dead from blood loss right now."

"Maybe you lost it before all this happened, and you just don't remember," the nun suggested, trying to assuage his fear.

"I don't think so. It's just... I'm so unaccustomed to only having one arm. I still feel like I've got both of them. I keep trying to use my left arm, but then I remember it's not there anymore." Alex eyed the stump protruding from his left shoulder uneasily. "I don't think that would be the case if I had lost it prior to this week."

An air-shaking rumble brought their conversation to an abrupt halt. Following on the heels of the tremorous sensations that wracked their bodies was a sound like screeching rubber, growing steadily greater in volume. Miriam's eyes widened in sudden comprehension – and with comprehension, terror.

"Quickly!" she said, rising to her feet. She couldn't bring herself to actually take Alex's hand in her own, so she gestured wildly to him, silently implored him to get up. Alex did so, but not without expressing concern at the nun's obvious distress.

"Who's coming? What's going on?"

Miriam's eyes frantically scanned their surroundings, searching for a suitable hiding place, but none was forthcoming. She turned back to face Alex: her skin was pale and ashen as she struggled to remain in control of her mental faculties. Only one phrase to describe the approaching intruders stood out among her stampeding thoughts.

"The Black Riders!"


	3. Farewell to Shadows

**Lost and Found**

**Chapter Two: Farewell to Shadows  
><strong>

Miriam and Alex backed away from the approaching cacophony, deeper into the shadows that pooled around the edges of the destroyed buildings; but they both knew that any attempt to hide in them was pointless. Whatever safety the darkness afforded them would quickly disintegrate once the gang members shone their headlights on them. Instead, both of them peered out anxiously at the open clearing ahead.

Miriam's eyes were so bright that they seemed to light the darkness. Her hand slipped underneath her clothes, seeking out the dedicated holster that held her gun. She was in the act of pulling it out when –

"Stop," Alex said. Miriam paused.

"Why?" she asked him, her breathing ragged. It didn't occur to her to wonder how Alex had known she was about to pull out a weapon when his face wasn't even turned towards her.

"Because..." Alex's brow knit, as though even _he_ didn't understand the reason for his sudden command. "Because it won't be needed."

"Just because I'm a nun doesn't mean I don't know how to use a gun," Miriam argued. And it was true: she _had_ received training underneath the priests before her departure from the monastery.

"I'm not saying that," Alex said, baffled. "I'm just saying... save your bullets for now."

And that was when she saw it: a silver Colt mounted on his side, partially concealed by his cloak. It was shiny, creating a perceptible contrast against Alex's grimy clothes, but the way his fingers were closed around it seemed to suggest an easiness and familiarity that she herself could never manufacture with her own weapon.

Seconds later, the full regiment of gang members arrived: they filled the clearing in a matter of seconds, as their numbers had more than doubled since the last time Miriam saw them. In addition to the guns that each gang member wore on his person like a badge of honor, they also wielded long, cruelly curved knives, swinging them around with what could only be termed a murderous carelessness. One of them spoke, his voice grating on their ears like sandpaper:

"Well, what do we have here? Looks like a pair of interlopers!"

The others laughed, the harsh sound of their merriment just as unpleasant as the boy's voice. Their face-splitting grins, coupled with the colorful markings that adorned their cheeks and foreheads, gave them the appearance of psychotic clowns. They conferred with one another then, exchanged ideas in shrill whispers that were clearly meant to be overheard by their prey:

"Wonder if they're lovers – "

"Knew it was a good idea to scope out this place – "

"We oughta cut their red – "

"Damn intruders think they can thumb their nose at us – "

At length they grew silent. One of the riders drew up closer to the pair on his bike, openly gloating at them. Alex looked at him, guessed that he was about seventeen. He carried an air of authority about him – his dark eyes shone with confidence, and he commandeered the biggest motorcycle – so he was probably the oldest as well.

"This is the territory of the Shadows," the oldest boy announced, as though he were a messenger for the ruler of a grand kingdom. "And the sentence for those who trespass on our territory is cancellation." His grin grew even more demented, if such a thing was possible.

So. Not the Black Riders, but close enough. And "cancellation" was probably a gang term for execution. They were going to be shot. _Why the __hell __do I feel so calm, then?_ Alex wondered. He wasn't trembling at all, wasn't breathing hard. It was like his body was in possession of some kind of knowledge that his mind hadn't yet grasped – knowledge that would grant him safe passage through the area's heavily guarded thoroughfares.

"Miriam," he whispered, and it was like there was another person in his body, forcing foreign words out of his lips. "Get on my back."

She stared. "What?"

"There's no way I can fight them all off. We're going to have to run for it."

"What are you mumblin' about?" one of the Shadows drawled loudly, visibly irritated, but Alex ignored him. He looked back at her, his green eyes locked with hers in a silent plea.

Miriam couldn't help it. She felt as if she was about to faint dead away at the prospect of clinging to Alex._ I can't do it. I can't do it. I have to._

"Please," Alex said, and now there was a low note of desperation in his voice. Knowing that she had no choice, the nun slowly closed the distance between them, placed her arms around his neck. An image from one of the Bad Days instantly bubbled to the surface of her consciousness, like muck rising to claim a once-pristine pond, and she almost_ did_ pass out then; but somehow she managed to hang on to reality, to not lose her sense of things. _Help me, Lord,_ she prayed silently.

Still, her breath remained thick with terror, and the movements of her body were like those of a cornered rabbit. Alex worried that she wouldn't be able to hang on to him, and he murmured in what he hoped was a reassuring tone:

"If you just keep your arms as tight around my neck as you can, you won't be hurt. I promise."

Wordlessly, Miriam tightened her grip on him. In fact, she did such a good job of it that he wondered if he might not choke to death. He could feel her breath beating hotly between his shoulder blades, as she had buried her head in his back to avoid meeting the hungry stares of the Shadows.

"Aw, look. She's so scared she's gotta rely on her boyfriend to protect her," one of Shadows sneered, and he drew a hand across his throat dismissively. Even though it had been made in jest, the gesture seemed to convey a killing intent. The others howled with laughter.

"Enough," the oldest boy said. "Let's show 'em what happens to those who cross the Shadows."

He drew his gun. Aimed it at their heads. And then –

The next thing Miriam knew, she was flying.

* * *

><p>Alex cast his gaze about the perimeter of the area, sizing up the situation. Things were looking very bad, indeed. They were surrounded by at least forty motorcyclists – all of them armed, and all of them braying for blood. He didn't know how proficient they were with their weapons, but even if today was the first day any of them had picked up a gun, the odds were still overwhelmingly in favor of their victory.<p>

In the back of his mind he was already reconstructing, step by step, just how exactly he had ended up in these bleak circumstances. _Is this what they mean by your life flashing before your eyes?_ Not that he could recall most of it.

When he had first come to, the world was red. That was his first – and only – coherent thought. If he had to describe now what that experience had been like, he supposed it was comparable to being born. He took in his utterly alien surroundings, and they held no meaning for him. He was no more cognizant than a newborn babe.

At first he wandered around aimlessly, pervasive dread somehow managing to invade the mental fog that had become his constant companion in those first forty-eight hours of consciousness. When he had finally come fully awake, he almost wished he hadn't. He realized that he had absolutely no recollection of his past, no name – and no left arm.

More disturbing yet was the discovery of the terrible scars that ran down the length of his torso, and the silver Colt mounted at his side, still fully loaded. He had to wonder what kind of life he had led before all of this had happened.

Still, he began to investigate what was left of the city, despite the fact that he didn't even know _what_ city this was. What he had discovered did not encourage him in the least: the city's two plants were missing – busted out of their bulbs, somehow – and the water was undrinkable. And the bodies...

There had been so many bodies. Men, women, children, the elderly. He had stopped and wept whenever he saw a new one. Even though he was certain that he hadn't known any of them, he still felt a sense of kinship with them, and the pain was like that of losing a brother or sister. He buried each of them, as he was possessed of the sinking feeling that none of their surviving loved ones would ever come to claim them.

Hopeless. It was hopeless.

At long last he'd sat down in the midst of the ruins, waiting to die. To join his lost brethren.

And then... she had found him.

He was deeply annoyed by that. A normal human being would have been thrilled to find another survivor, but he'd been so wrapped up in his own cloak of self-pity that he had almost driven her away. He wasn't ready to face the prospect of living again. But the girl wouldn't give up, and finally he had to concede defeat. He had even let her give him a name. _Alex._ Something about that name was good and right, even though it wasn't truly his.

When he had finally brought himself to face Miriam, he was a bit taken aback by what he saw. The girl – or the nun, as what appeared to be her station in life – had large hazel eyes, and a heart-shaped face framed by long dark hair that had been drawn up into a ponytail. She wore baggy clothes: they consisted of overalls, as well as a shirt that was two sizes too big for her. It was the clothes, along with the wooden rosary she wore around her neck, that struck him as unusual.

Before he could get to know her better, however, the sound of approaching motorcycles signaled danger. The nun had responded swiftly, reaching inside of her overalls to pull out a weapon.

He'd told her to stop. Why had he done that? They were undoubtedly going to need the firepower, as they were hopelessly outnumbered and outmatched. And yet... yet...

_I can get us out of here._

The thought came to him unbidden, but he couldn't disagree with it. His body, which was troubled by only a minimal amount of tension, continued to communicate desires to his brain that he couldn't make heads or tails of – things like_ pick up the girl_ and _make no attempt to fight back._ He was unafraid, but still found himself dwelling on all the things that could go wrong, like a starving dog worrying a bone. After all, while escape was possible, it certainly wasn't going to be _easy._ Not only was he going to have to carry Miriam, but he also had the burden of his missing arm to contend with – he wasn't lying when he said he still hadn't gotten used to the fact that it was gone. His sense of balance was poor, to put it mildly.

As these thoughts were going through his mind, the head Shadow unholstered his gun and prepared to shoot them dead; and it was then that Alex realized that the time for second-guessing was officially over.

The Shadow's bullet never found its target. Alex moved with blinding speed; and by the time the explosive _crack_ of the gunshot had completely ceased, he was well over fifteen feels away, darting among the bikes, exploiting the opportunity created by their riders' stunned reactions. He realized that he wasn't going to need his gun to break through their ranks. Not yet, anyway.

When at last his enemies had recovered from their shock – it had taken all of five seconds, but that was more than enough time for him – the movement of the air around him betrayed their actions, allowing him to gain a mental picture of what was happening on all sides of him. In this case, the bikers' numbers worked against them as well – they were clustered too closely together, so that they were loath to start shooting and accidentally hit one another. Instead, they tried to fan out and create a clear opening that would expose their prey.

Alex was prepared for that, however. Continuing to weave an orderly pattern out of the chaos, he ducked low and seized the end of one of the motorcycles. Its startled rider immediately brandished a dagger, attempted to stab him where he stood; but he overshot in his eagerness to eviscerate his prey, and when Alex nimbly evaded the downward thrust of the knife, he went stumbling off of his mount. The motorcycle, still in motion, barreled through the Shadows' final line of offense. Alex considered the possibility of driving the motorcycle out of there, but he quickly dismissed it, instinctively understanding that his talents did not include navigating a moving vehicle. Instead, he leaped off of the bike, made a break for the nearest building.

_"After him!"_ the oldest Shadow cried, and the bikes screeched towards them in response, the roar of the engines filling their ears and making rational thought impossible. Alex felt himself beginning to operate on a strange feline instinct that carried him over the tops of fallen buildings, sent him sailing through the air like a bird in flight. He fired two shots once he had reached the top of one such building, managing to fell six of the bikers – somehow, he was able to envision the exact trajectory that the Colt's bullets would take, allowing him to work the ricochet effect to its full advantage. The Shadows cried out in pain, watched with utter confusion as their weapons flew out of their hands.

He hadn't killed them, of course. That was the main thing he was concerned about. He didn't know _why_ that was so important... he only knew that if someone died because of him, a part of his missing identity would die as well, to remain forever out of his reach.

Anyway, he was fully capable of disarming without killing, so that wasn't a problem. He fired one more round, then leaped over to the next building. Far from weighing him down, he found that Miriam was a light – _amazingly_ light – burden, and even though his sense of balance was pretty off-kilter, as he'd predicted, it was still iles ahead of whatever the average person was capable of. He resumed their escape on the ground, realizing that the dilapidated buildings would only offer temporary protection.

Three shots later, he was out of ammo. He holstered the now-useless Colt. "Is your gun fully loaded?" he asked Miriam, his question punctuated by shallow breaths.

"Y... yes," she answered.

"May I use it?"

_He's seriously **asking** me?_ Miriam answered in the affirmative, handed over her weapon.

Alex, in turn, immediately used it to pick off a small team of Shadows that were pursuing them from the right. He didn't have a second holster that he could place Miriam's gun in for the interim, so he clenched the handle tightly between his teeth, hoping it didn't go off and blow off half his face.

With his arm now free, Alex began to climb up the face of the tallest building yet. He used his left leg the way he would have used his left arm, while the other leg acted as a support. If he could just make it to the top, he reasoned, no amount of bullets would be able to reach him and Miriam. The bikers would eventually tire of their little game of cat-and-mouse and leave them there, free to plan their next move.

He hadn't considered just how weak the building's constitution was, however. When he had scaled over half of its considerable height, he reached out to take hold of a brick that jutted out of the side, just above his head. At the same time, his right leg suddenly went into a freefall, the scaffolding he had been resting it on suddenly snapping off like a twig. The rest of his body soon followed. His other arm shot out, scrabbling desperately to regain some kind of grip on the side of the building, but then he remembered he didn't _have_ another arm; and so the only course of action left open to him was to tumble helplessly towards the ground, pray that he didn't land on his back.

Fortunately, it didn't happen. Still suspended in midair, Alex twisted his torso and legs with an urgency that overpowered the force of the winds that buffeted them, and he was able to descend with his feet facing the ground. He landed in a crouch, dove quickly to avoid the spray of bullets that were suddenly discharged in his direction. As he did so, he returned fire, incapacitating the guilty party.

There were far fewer Shadows by this point, he noted. And a good thing, too: he'd used up the rest of Miriam's ammo. Most of the bikers had fallen by the wayside after he had relieved them of their weapons, while others had crashed into one of the enormous piles of crumbling concrete and rusted steel that he had spent a good deal of their escape weaving around. That same lithe, inhuman grace served him well, as he continued to dodge stray bullets with ease.

At length they caught sight of a pair of large, wrought-iron gates just ahead, secured together by a heavy chain. _That _little obstacle should have brought them up short, but Alex didn't even hesitate. Summoning all the strength that remained in his sinews, he raced towards the gates at full speed. Miriam realized what he was about to do, cried out in a shrill voice:

"Alex – what are you – you can't – "

"Hold on tight," was all he said.

It had been done before she could even register the moment it began. In what seemed to be a single, fluid motion, Alex placed Miriam's gun back in his mouth, lunged forward with one outstretched arm, and vaulted the gate, his body hovering effortlessly over the dangerous tipped spikes that adorned the top. Seconds after he landed on the ground on the other side, unhurt, the bikers pulled up to the gate, their predatory cries of bloodlust being rapidly exchanged for those of anger and frustration. Most of them tried to force the gate open, but it held fast. Short of attempting to climb the high – _far_ too high – gate themselves, there was no way they could pass.

The bullets were still coming, though. Alex whirled around and ran backwards; he wasn't about to risk Miriam's life, no matter how confident he was in his ability to evade them. When they had put considerable distance between themselves and the bikers, Alex began to relax, though he didn't slow down his pace.

"Miriam," he said to the human bundle he was shouldering, "you doing okay so far?"

Almost imperceptibly, the nun gave a nod of her head, her sweaty bangs brushing against his neck. Her eyes were wide with what could only be termed shock – shock that they had survived, as well as shock at Alex's athletic prowess.

"That's good," Alex said, relieved. "Now, where's this church you were tal – "

A scream of rage echoing from nearby cut him off. It was the oldest boy, sitting astride his massive bike, his eyes blazing with fury. Nobody was accompanying him, however, so he must have been alone when he located the weakness in the gate that allowed him to pass.

_"How – dare – you – humiliate – me – "_

"Dammit, don't you ever give up?" Alex yelled, abruptly changing course. The remaining rider's response was to flip him off. Then, with a grunt of effort, he began to turn his bike. The motorcycle fishtailed around, its wheels spinning in the ground, spitting out thick clouds of smoke. It had obviously sustained quite a bit of damage during the chase.

The rider's prey, for his part, was finally beginning to feel the effects of fatigue himself. His lungs heaved for want of air, and his legs were consumed by an intense burning sensation. At this rate, he wasn't going to last much longer.

Up ahead was a luxurious mansion – or at least, it had once been luxurious. Now it was nothing but a burned-out shell of itself, its hulls still smoldering dangerously. Beyond that was an open field that Alex guessed used to be the backyard. It stretched out far beyond his field of vision, seemed to travel on for iles. Running into the mansion wasn't the smart choice, but trying to outrun a motorcycle over what was basically the equivalent of a small desert was even worse. He darted through the mansion's entrance.

He found himself plunging headlong into what could have passed for the inside of a warehouse. Kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms – these rooms could no longer be distinguished in the aftermath of the destruction. There were multiple sets of stairs, but one look above his head confirmed that they didn't lead anywhere accessible. Entire floors were missing, while others had enormous holes punched in them; the remainder of those floors looked dangerously unstable, on the verge of crumbling away to nothing. They were going to have to evade the final Shadow here on the first floor. Alex felt discouraged, but his mind continued to rattle off plans and conjectures at a rapid-fire pace.

Maybe he could confuse the last Shadow. If there was a suitable place for him to hide, he could leave Miriam there – jump out as the boy passed by – catch him off guard and steal his gun –

He reached the end of the hallway, and it was there that all such thoughts were extinguished.

Nothing but a bullet-scarred wall faced them.

Miriam said it first.

"Dead end."

* * *

><p>Seconds later, the final Shadow had fully gained on them: his bike roared around the corner they had turned several feels back, its otherworldly din assaulting their eardrums. His eyes glittering with malicious glee, he raised his weapon.<p>

"Wait! Don't shoot!"

In his weakened state, Alex hadn't been aware of the moment Miriam released her grip on him. Now he was staring at her in shock as she suddenly interposed herself between him and their pursuer, her hands held high in a gesture of surrender.

"Miriam, what the hell are you doing?" Alex demanded. Miriam ignored him.

"Please... please don't hurt him," she begged the Shadow. "I'll go with you... I'll do anything you want." Her voice suddenly grew meek, submissive. The ease with which she was able to achieve such a tone disturbed Alex. _"Anything."_

"Well, well," the boy said – clearly surprised, but not unpleasantly so. He lowered his gun. "Now that sounds like a deal I can't refuse."

Alex felt sick as he watched the nun join the Shadow on his bike. He helplessly stretched out a hands towards her. "No... Miriam, please don't do this..."

She turned back to look at him, and the expression in her face shocked him to the core. It looked... _dead._ Her eyes were dark and vacant, staring resolutely at nothing; and her lips were tightly closed, betraying no hint of any emotion, no inkling of intelligence.

"Consider yourself lucky, lover-boy," the boy said, glowering at him. "And don't worry. The boss knows how to take good care of the women." He leered at Miriam, who didn't give any sign that she had heard him, and followed up in a lusty voice: "And this here is one _fine_ woman." Without warning, he began to work at the clasps that held Miriam's overalls in place.

"We just need to get you out of these clothes..." The suspenders slipped off her shoulders, fully revealing the large white shirt she wore underneath: it ran down almost to her knees. The Shadow's gloved fingers reached out hungrily to touch her bare legs.

"Stop it!" Alex yelled. "Don't touch her!"

"Yeah, you're right. The boss is gonna want a piece of her first," was the Shadow's rejoinder. With a dirty snicker, he revved up the engine, prepared to drive away.

"No! Stop! Come back!" Alex continued to yell, but the deafening sound of the engine overpowered his voice. He took a few trembling steps forward, but it was useless. He no longer had the stamina to match the motorcycle's speed. If it left now, he would never see Miriam again. He couldn't let that happen. He'd promised her she'd be safe – he'd _promised_ –

He did the only thing he could do. Planting his feet apart on the floor, clenching his fist so tightly that the knuckle turned bone-white, he threw back his head and roared at the top of his lungs._  
><em>

_"Come back here, you chickenshit!"_

That did the trick. The Shadow immediately leaped off his perch on the bike, advanced towards him with both his knife and his gun out – as though he couldn't decide whether to shoot Alex dead or disembowel him. "You son of a bitch," he hissed, his features mottled with rage. "The only reason you're alive right now is because of her."

Alex paid no attention to his remark. "What kind of scum stoops to kidnapping a young woman? No, you're worse than scum."

The boy cocked the trigger of his gun – a clear warning of what would happen if his former prey didn't keep his mouth shut. In response, Alex gave a tight smile, his eyes narrowing.

"Shoot me."

The light of understanding suddenly returned to Miriam's eyes upon hearing these words. Now it was her turn to ask: "W... what are you doing?"

"Don't tempt me," the boy snarled, but his voice lacked conviction, as though he suspected a trap. His finger hovered over the trigger of his gun, but he didn't shoot.

"What are you waiting for? I told you to shoot me," Alex said, growing visibly agitated. Miriam, for her part, began to shake violently, as a terrible premonition began to slowly coalesce in her mind's eye.

"Alex – you can't be serious – "

_"Shoot me, dammit!"_

His wish was granted. A single gunshot rang out, and Alex pitched backwards, blood spraying from a freshly inflicted wound. He landed on the floor, groaned weakly, and then lay still.

"NO! NO! ALEX!" Miriam screamed, and she immediately leaped off the bike, started towards her companion's unmoving body.

"Shut up, you bitch!" the boy cried, and he roughly grabbed her before she had covered even one feel. When she tried to resist him, he slapped her. Forced to abandon her mask of disinterest, the nun's psyche had gone boomeranging in the opposite direction. Still screaming, she tried to run over to Alex's side, only to be restrained by the Shadow. She tried to fight him off, but her efforts were in vain – the boy's grip was too powerful, and terror and grief had quickly sapped her of all her strength.

Neither of them watched as Alex slowly picked himself up off the ground, his remaining arm cradling the stump that freely bled from the impact the bullet had made when it struck it, staining his fingers a deep crimson.

Nor did they watch as he proceeded to rip the bullet out of his own wound, disrupting flesh and sending bits of it splattering onto the ground.

They _did_ turn around, however, just in time to see him flick the bullet into the air. Pick up Miriam's gun. Open the chamber.

They were an utterly captive audience now. The bullet entered the chamber. Alex closed it, raised the gun, cocked the trigger, and –

_Bang._

For a moment there was deep, intolerable silence. Then the oldest Shadow released his grip on Miriam, screaming in pain. The nun saw then that his other hand – the one that had been holding a gun only seconds ago – was now empty and bleeding. She quickly darted away from him and towards the wall, paying no mind to the clothes she left behind. Alex, for his part, wasn't done: he rushed towards the boy, delivered a roundhouse kick to his chest that soundly knocked him out. Now immobile, the last Shadow crumpled to the floor like a tower of building blocks. Alex turned away from him in disgust, then looked at his companion.

"Miriam," he said. "Are you okay?"

Tears streaked Miriam's face. How he could worry about _her_ when he was utterly broken and beaten, his life's fluids draining onto the floor? "I-I'm fine," she said in a halting whisper.

"Good," Alex said, smiling weakly. "That's good..."

It had taken all of his remaining strength to say those words. Now completely depleted, Alex toppled forward, hit the floor with a heavy _thud._ Blackness touched the edges of his vision, and in seconds he had fully surrendered to the welcoming arms of unconsciousness.

* * *

><p>AN: I didn't come up with any of the "slanguage" that the gang uses in this chapter; that particular honor goes to Rodman Philbrick, author of the post-apocalyptic YA novel_ The Last Book in the Universe._ It was one of my favorite books growing up, and the language used by the characters had always fascinated me. So, with utmost gratitude – and apologies! – to him, I use it here.


	4. The Sojourner

**Lost and Found**

**Chapter Three: The Sojourner  
><strong>

For long moments there was no sound other than the idling of the motorcycle engine. Then it was drowned out by the sounds of choked sobs, as Miriam cried openly, unable to adjust to this new situation, to cope with the perpetually changing face of reality. Seconds ago, she had resigned herself to certain death – even if the gang had planned on keeping her alive, there was no way she could have survived descending into the dungeon of her past a second time – and she needed time to recover from that. Had she taken complete leave of her senses, she could have wept for an eternity; but her thoughts quickly turned towards the man who had saved her life by risking his own. She dried her tears as best she could, attempted to gather her scattered wits.

Her hair, which had been liberated from the tight ponytail that she typically wore it in, now fell loosely over her shoulders and in her face. Even though her shirt covered every inch of her skin save for that below her knees, the nun still felt naked, exposed. She knew she had to ward off the mounting sense of panic that would soon follow if she remained this unclothed. She found the overalls, draped loosely over the seat of the motorcycle, and put them on. That done, she looked about the hallway, unsure of what to do next.

First things first: the headlights from the bike had to be put out. Twin beams of light shone through a hole located on the far end of the hall, broadcasting their presence as clearly as if they were trails of campfire smoke. Miriam reached up over the bars of the bike, fiddled with the controls until they shut off. The idling of the motorcycle engine was not loud, so she let it be. She made her way back to Alex. He was bleeding out onto the floor, the dusty carpet absorbing the wine-colored liquid like the throat of a parched man.

She got down on her knees, crept as close to him as she could dare – now, even _now, _her cowardice knew no bounds – and examined the wound. The flesh in the center of the stump was shredded and hung in raw strips, probably from when he had forcibly removed the bullet that had struck him. _Why? Why did you do that for me?_ she thought, her eyes spilling over again. But the sight of fresh blood dripping out of the wound quickly reminded her that there were more important things to focus on right now.

The thought occurred to her that she should really try to get herself and Alex out of here before trying anything with his injury – what if the other Shadows discovered their location, or the unconscious Shadow laying just a few feels away woke up? – but the bleeding was heavy, and she doubted he would survive if they left the mansion now. She could only hope and pray that they would be left alone.

_Please, Lord. He saved my life. Let me do this one thing for him._

Miriam knew how to treat most any kind of injury – after all, praying and singing weren't the only disciplines nuns were expected to master – but the first-aid kit had been lost back where she had first found Alex. As things stood right now, the only thing she could really do for him was to stanch the flow of blood. Otherwise, he would most certainly be lost.

She needed to find some material to serve as a dressing for the wound, along with some means of cutting away at it. She cast a reluctant glance back at the head Shadow, who was still dead to the world, and approached his prone body. He still held his knife in one outstretched palm.

"With God, all things are possible," the nun murmured to herself, and then she seized the knife. To her immense relief, the Shadow didn't stir, and she stumbled away as quickly as she could.

Now to resolve the second problem. What kind of material could she use that would be thick enough to dress the wound, and yet also give her a clean cut? The Shadow's clothes were surprisingly thin, as were the robes Alex was draped in. The leather suit he wore might have been useful, but she didn't trust herself to cut pieces of it away without also slicing his skin. Her own clothes were out of the question –

_Or are they?_ Miriam looked down at her overalls, which were of a sturdy material. Two large pockets had been sewn on the front. Without hesitation, she began to cut away at them with the knife. The first came off easily enough in her hand. When she started in on the second, however, a piece of paper fell out of it, drifted to the floor. She picked it up.

"My map," she said slowly, not realizing its significance at first. Then she uttered a soft _hallelujah _and held it tightly against her chest. Without the city map, she realized, she and Alex would have been hopelessly lost, unable to return to the sanctuary of the church.

Miriam finished cutting off the rest of the material, then pressed it against Alex's wound, ignoring the shiver that traveled up her spine as she did so. It held fast, thanks to the adhesive properties of the blood, but she was going to need something to tie it off with. Once more, she was at a loss. After wracking her brain a few moments longer, she settled on removing both of her suspenders, which she then wrapped tightly around the aggrieved area. While she knew this meant giving up the use of her overalls – and subsequently, a return to the relative vulnerability of the white shirt – there was simply no help for it. When she was satisfied that her impromptu dressings would hold, she began to consider transportation. Her gaze automatically went to the motorcycle, which still sat there idling, as stolid and patient a presence as any of the beasts of burden that wandered this planet.

_At least I don't have to think too much about this one..._ The nun had no idea how to drive a motorcycle – she'd never operated any kind of moving vehicle in her lifetime – but she supposed today was the day she was going to have to learn, for both hers and Alex's sake. She walked up to the motorcycle, which was of a dark purplish hue; the word "Angelina" was printed in large green letters down one side.

"Well, Angelina, let's hope you can get us out of this mess," she said with a wan smile, and then she shook her head in mortification._ I'm talking to a motorcycle! I really must be losing it. _

She began to lug Angelina to where Alex was lying. It was tough going, as Angelina was of a considerable size, but eventually she had the bike positioned parallel to his body. Now came the hardest part of all: after all, it wasn't like Alex was going to get up and set himself down in the motorcycle's side car.

She took an enormous breath, inhaling deeply through both her mouth and nostrils, then knelt down over Alex's body, wrapped her arms around his neck, and began to pull him into a sitting position. She kept both eyes tightly shut as she did so, but she shuddered and very nearly dropped him when she felt his head fall lifelessly against her bosom.

_– No! Dammit, get a hold of yourself! He's out cold. He can't do anything to you._

She expended a titanic amount of energy hauling him up and into the bike's side car, positioning him so that he wouldn't fall out once they got moving. The bike's size worked in her favor: the side car was large enough that it easily contained most of his body, save for his arm and legs. When she had accomplished her task, her entire body ached in protest – an understandable reaction, really, as Alex had to have outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds, and the monastery had never exactly prioritized physical activities.

At long last she clambered onto the bike herself, flattened the map out between the handle bars. She began to timidly poke at the controls, praying to God that she wouldn't accidentally hit the switch that controlled the horn – and then, that she wouldn't crash within five minutes of getting the damn thing to move.

* * *

><p>She didn't hit the horn, and she didn't crash. Desperation and need had turned out to be excellent teachers, as she eventually learned to differentiate between the throttle, brakes, and clutch; forced herself to maintain a stable balance; and figured out how to read a map while driving (this was much harder than it sounded). All in all, she thought she had done rather well for herself.<p>

Now she was back at the chapel, and she set Alex down on one of the wooden pews, where she had also laid out a new set of medical supplies. When she began to remove his dressings, however, she received a nasty shock.

Alex's wound had completely healed over. The only evidence that there had ever even been an injury to begin with was the faint scar overlaying the crisscrossed patterns of older, deeper scars_ – _scars originally framing what had once been a large tract of horribly damaged flesh._  
><em>

_It also doesn't explain why I'm not dead from blood loss. _Those words rang through her head just then, an ominous echo that left her momentarily breathless. For the first time, it occurred to her that she had far more reason to fear Alex than any of the sadistic youths that had pursued them thus far. What manner of man healed so quickly and completely from what could have easily been a fatal wound – or had the strength and speed to evade over a score of motorcycles – or could dodge _bullets,_ for God's sake?

The instinct to run away suddenly took hold of her, but she realized how ridiculous that was. After all, she had been prepared to give her freedom – indeed, her very_ life _– to save him. Knowing that he was exceptional in certain areas wasn't going to change that... even if some of those areas _did_ openly defy the designs of nature. She gingerly peeled off the rest of the blood-soaked cloth, then froze when she caught sight of his face.

He was staring at her.

"W-when did you...?" she started to stammer, but her voice trailed off when Alex suddenly shut his eyes tightly and turned his head – almost comically so, except that she simply wasn't capable of laughing at anything right now.

"Sorry, sorry," he said, a blush spreading over his cheeks. "I didn't see – anything I wasn't supposed to – "

Miriam didn't need to look down at herself to remember that she was clothed only in a white shirt. "I'm sorry," she returned, even though she didn't know what exactly she had to be sorry _for_. "I had to use some of my clothes to patch you up."

He kept his eyes closed. She could have told him to stop with that, but she realized that the gesture actually made her feel better. "Where are we?" he asked.

"We're at the chapel," she said. "I drove us here with that boy's motorcycle."

For a long time he said nothing, as though struggling to absorb everything that had happened that day. "You saved my life," he finally said, incredulity coloring his voice.

"And you saved mine," she told him. "You're all better now," she added, trying to sound nonchalant.

He cracked one eye open, cautiously looked over at the stump, whereupon both of his eyes widened in shock. "H-how did that happen?" he cried, and Miriam realized that he was even more frightened than her at this development. He pulled himself into a sitting position so that he could get a better look at the wound, perhaps to convince himself that he wasn't seeing things.

"I don't know. Perhaps it was a miracle from God. ...After all, you've done so many miraculous things today," she said, referring to their earlier escape from the gang. "Were you an acrobat in the past, do you think? Some of the stunts you pulled off, they were..." She almost said "inhuman," but at the last second she settled for: "Amazing."

"I don't know," he confessed, still looking at his stump, clearly disturbed. Miriam tried to divert his attention away from it.

"It really _was_ a miracle, you know," she said quietly. "At least, when that Shadow shot at you. For the bullet to hit you in that exact spot..." She closed her eyes, shook her head slowly. "You really took a risk when you did that."

He was silent for long moments, his expression still uneasy, but for a different reason now. Then: "That wasn't a miracle. I planned it that way."

She gaped at him. _"Planned_ it? But how – "

"I don't know," he said. "I saw the bullet coming, and I – I just knew how to move so it would hit me there." He looked away, seeming to intuit the nun's sudden fear. "I'm sorry. I probably shouldn't have said that."

"It's all right," she said. The atmosphere, which was already tense, had now graduated to frightening. She didn't like it – nor did she like being ruled by her fear, as had been the case for so many years now, and especially for the last few days. "You're a mess, you know," she said suddenly, indignantly. She put her hands on her hips, her eyes scanning over his body as though she were a disapproving mother. "Why don't you scoot downstairs and get yourself cleaned up." It wasn't a question, but rather a command.

"You're going to let me stay with you?" he said in a tone of immense surprise.

She continued to glare at him. "You think I was wandering around in the city for my health?"

"Well, no," he said after a moment, "but after everything you've learned about me... aren't you afraid?"

"Yes," she admitted, letting her arms fall against her sides. "But you're afraid too. I can't abandon you." She smiled just then; she just wasn't capable of acting like any of the other nuns. "You can stay as long as you want."

Alex bent his head, but he couldn't hide the cocktail of emotions – fear, hope, sadness, gratitude – that defined his features just then. "Thank you," he said at last.

"You don't have to thank me," she said. "Just get downstairs and use the shower. I have running water, so you're in luck."

_"Water?_ You have water?" He looked more concerned than grateful.

"Yes," she said, confused. "This hill taps into the same reserve of water that the rest of the city does. And the entire church operates off of a generator for power, not the city's power plants." She stopped then, as something suddenly occurred to her. "The plants. Are they – ?" She was ashamed to admit that she hadn't devoted a thought to them since the onset of the disaster.

"They're gone," he said simply.

_"Gone?_ But how?"

"I have no idea. Whoever caused this to happen must have also stolen the plants, somehow." She could sense what his next question was going to be. "What happened to this city? What_ is_ this city? Did terrorists..."

"I don't think anyone knows," she said. "I saw it when it happened, though. There was an enormous beam of light, and then the city... just wasn't there anymore. This is July," she said, by way of answering his other question. "Though it's more like Lost July now, I suppose."

"July..." He looked off into the distance, as though the name might have held some significance to him. At length, he turned back to her. "You said you had water?" She nodded. "You haven't been drinking it, have you?"

"No, I've just been using it to clean," Miriam said. She looked at him, concerned. "What's wrong with the water?"

"I guess it's all right to bathe in," he said, more to himself than to her. "But you can't drink it. I tried doing that earlier, and I..." He looked a little embarrassed. "...Um, I threw up. Somehow, the city's water supply has been – tainted."

Miriam was sobered by this knowledge: after all, if she hadn't stocked her home with bottled water for the Sunday school kids to drink before Lost July (for that was what she was starting to think of this incident as now), she might well have depended on the water that came from the tap to quench her thirst. In the same instant, she decided that since Alex had shared such a vital piece of information with her, she might as well offer up what she knew in return.

"A few hours after the city's destruction – at least, I think it was a few hours; it didn't feel like too much time had passed – I went to the sand steamer station." She stopped then, suddenly dreaded what she had to say next. "There were... a lot of people there. Hundreds, actually. They were fighting to board a sand steamer. I think most of them managed to escape on it, but..." She didn't finish her sentence. If she thought about it too much, the results would be every bit as dire as whenever she allowed herself to dwell on the Bad Days.

Alex put his head in his hand. He said nothing, but the nun could tell that he was trying to keep himself from unleashing some great emotion. She bowed her own head, held back tears so as not to inadvertently push him over the edge.

"We can only hope that the federal government will send us some kind of aid," Miriam continued slowly. "After all, I think that the steamer could have only carried a third of this city's population. As for the rest..." Her eyes traveled morosely along the length of the chapel's hardwood floor. "They're either still somewhere in this city, or they're – " here she stumbled, as the image of the deceased citizens remained seared in her consciousness – "in the station."

Alex kept his face covered, implicitly understanding what she meant by that. "There's no way to leave the city on foot?" he said after a moment, his voice slightly shaking with the effort of hiding his grief.

"It's impossible. July is surrounded by hundreds of iles of sand, and even if someone had enough supplies to last them the journey, the constant sand storms make traveling extremely hazardous. The only way in and out is by taking a sand steamer."

"Then I guess we have no choice but to wait," he said, still in that clipped tone of voice. "And in the meantime, we keep looking for survivors."

"You're... the only person I've seen in over a week," Miriam admitted. "I... I don't think many people survived."

She instantly regretted saying anything. A deluge of tears coursed down Alex's cheeks, and his shoulders heaved with silent sobs. "I'm sorry," she said. "Why... why don't you clean up and rest for a while. We can talk more tomorrow."

He didn't respond for several seconds, but finally he said slowly, reluctantly, "All right," and he got to his feet. She walked ahead of him and lifted up the door that led down into her home. He shuffled listlessly down the stairs.

"The bathroom is the first door on your right," she called down after him. "I'll go turn on the generator for you."

She was extremely careful not to follow him downstairs until she heard the firm _snick_ of the bathroom door closing.

* * *

><p>"We're going to need more ammunition," Alex said.<p>

About six days had passed since that fateful meeting. The two survivors had taken an inventory of all the supplies that Miriam had stockpiled down in her home, with plans to carefully ration out the remaining food and bottled water for the next few weeks. They never used the generator unless they needed to bathe (which was sparingly), or to make coffee (which was more than sparingly, much to Miriam's shame). As for bedding, there was only the one simple mattress; but Alex seemed perfectly content with sleeping on the carpeted floor, despite Miriam's protests.

During those days, they talked. In lieu of imparting any details about his life before July, he'd asked several questions about hers. Miriam noticed that he never asked her about what her life had been like before the monastery. She didn't know if it was because he sensed she didn't want to talk about it _–_ he seemed to read her better than she could read herself, a quality she had never known a human being to possess _–_ or because his interest simply didn't go back that far.

"The nuns who took care of me were rather... dour," Miriam had confessed during one of these talks. They sat together in darkness, like baby sandworms that had not yet emerged from their underground cocoons. "No sense of humor. So I think you can guess how I got mine." Alex smiled weakly at that, though of course she couldn't see it. "But laughter wasn't the only thing I was deprived of. I never stepped foot outside of the monastery once I started living there, so my only means of escape was by reading books. Mostly fantasy novels from old Earth," she added at the last. "It's not much fun reading about endless desert, I don't think."

She supposed she should have been frightened, sitting there in the dark with him; but instead she felt safe, as though nothing could touch her, though of course she herself could not touch him. And ever since he had begun living here with her, her night terrors had completely ceased. There was an element of divine Mystery in that, she knew, and the nun never questioned it.

But now, this morning, she felt anything but secure. She watched with worried eyes as Alex padded into the bathroom, shut the door behind him. When he emerged a few minutes later, he was no longer wearing the large gray sweatshirt and pants that had served as his night clothes, but the black leather suit she had first found him in. "Why do you need ammunition?" she asked.

"Because that gang might discover this place, and I'd rather be armed if it comes to that," he replied. He thought for a moment. "We'll need some fuel for the generator before too long, too."

"Where will you find that?"

"The explosion, or whatever it was... when it happened, it fried the engines of all the cars in the city. Or at least, the ones I've encountered. But I bet we can still use the fuel inside of them."

"How do you think the Shadows were able to use those motorcycles, then?" she wondered aloud.

"I don't know. Maybe they were in an underground warehouse?" he ventured. He went up the stairs and outside. Miriam followed him, tugging a large black duffel bag that she had liberated from her closet.

"If you're really going to try to bring back an entire engine, you'll need something to put it in," she said, placing the bag on the ground next to him. Alex thanked her and bent down to take it. "And remember, if you see any other survivors..."

He nodded. "Yeah, I know. They come back here with me." He shouldered the duffel bag, began to walk down the hill.

"May you go with God's blessing," she called after him.

To her surprise, he stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. He was glaring, but not at her... in fact, his eyes seemed to travel right through her, fixed on some impossibly distant object in the sky. "I don't believe in God," he said. His voice was flat, but it was also tempered by a vein of quiet anger.

She had no idea what to say to that. "...You don't?" she started to reply uncertainly, and then she immediately flushed scarlet, knowing that she sounded stupid. "Is that... something you remember about yourself?"

"No. It's something I decided just now."

"Oh." Miriam continued to feel awkward. She drew closer to him, unconsciously gripping her rosary. "Why not?"

Alex cast a baleful glance down at the ruined city, as though that was all the answer that was needed. "It's preferable to believing in a God cruel enough to let things like this happen."

She bristled. "God isn't cruel."

"Then why allow this?"

"I don't know," Miriam admitted after a moment. "But I believe that wherever there is evil in the world, God uses it to fulfill His good purposes."

Alex didn't look convinced. "If He has the power to do that, then why not prevent evil from happening at all?"

_"For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face,"_ she recited._ "Now I know in part; but then shall I know fully, even as I also was fully known._ ...It's from the Bible," she explained, when Alex looked at her questioningly. "We don't understand why terrible things happen, but someday, when we are ushered into the presence of the Lord, we will understand why it was better for us to have suffered."

"You don't really believe that," he said, and now _she_ was the one to regard him with confusion. "Because I know now that you're better than that. If you really believed what you just said, you wouldn't have tried to help anyone at all. You would've just sat up here in your church, accepting it all as a necessary given, and just being grateful that God valued you enough to keep you alive in His divine plan." The last two words he delivered with unmistakable sarcasm.

Miriam foundered in her response. Was Alex right? Did she really believe that there was no ultimate reason for suffering, that all pain and tragedy would not _–_ with a little time _–_ be redeemed?

_After all, what possible justification could there be for what **I** went through? __  
><em>

"I'm sorry," she said at last. "I wish I had a better answer for you."

He looked as if he wanted to argue some more, but then a resigned expression crept into his face. "No, I'm sorry," he said with a sigh, his shoulders sagging. "I wasn't, you know... trying to attack what you believe. I just _–_ " He bent his head, his teeth gritting with the strain that only unutterable frustration could produce. "I just feel so damn helpless!" Moisture collected underneath his eyelids, but he stopped himself from fully submitting to his emotional pain.

Miriam wanted so badly to put a hand on his shoulder, reassure him that he wasn't alone in his suffering. But she found that even this simple task was beyond her capacity. _I'm so weak,_ she thought, feeling disgusted with herself; but she didn't have time to linger on this train of thought, as Alex was speaking again.

"I'll be back tomorrow," he was saying. "At the latest. I shouldn't have any trouble finding what I need."

"Be careful," she told him.

"I'm more worried about you."

"It's okay," she returned impishly, "I have a gun," and then she was giggling, her pathetic sense of humor somehow inspiring true gaiety in her. Alex, for his part, gave another of his wan smiles.

As she watched him make his way down the hill, Miriam reflected on the week's events for perhaps the hundredth time. She had left the monastery – the place that she had called home for the last ten years – and arrived at July, only to experience its destruction firsthand. She had seen untold numbers of dead innocents, and had almost been killed herself by a group of murderous juveniles. And now she was just finding out that her companion – an amnesiac young man who was frighteningly skilled in both gunplay and athleticism – was an atheist.

She didn't know whether to cry, or keep laughing; and eventually, she turned back and descended into the church basement, where she lost herself in fevered prayers for the rest of the day.


	5. Suffer the Little Children

**Lost and Found**

**Chapter Four: Suffer the Little Children**

The little girl wandered the streets of July.

It had been two weeks since it had earned its status as a "lost" city. The wind was terrible that day: it made short work of many of the buildings that were still standing, causing them to crumble to the ground, denying shelter to those who suffered the wind's ill effects. It whipped through the girl's hair as she shuffled, zombie-like, through the city, sent it flying into her eyes and nose, but she took no notice of it. Instead, her spindly arms hugged her body in an attempt to ward off the cold. All around her a ghoulish, washed-out patina had settled over the city landscape, so that it resembled a page from a coloring book that had been filled in solely with dull, dark-hued crayons.

In an absurd appeal to normalcy, she reached down with trembling fingers and attempted to straighten her dress. This was, of course, a useless gesture – if not only because of the wind, but because her dress was now nothing more than a haphazard patchwork of dirt stains and gaping tears – but it helped somewhat to put her in mind of her former life, even if it couldn't truly draw her thoughts away from the day the city had fallen.

It had been a terrifying transformation. One moment the city stood before her, an eternal monument of beauty and strength, and the next it was reduced to a pile of skeletal remains, the blackened, half-collapsed buildings leering out at her like hungry creatures of the night. Her home was in shambles. She had cried and cried that day, and Mommy and Daddy had just held her, trying to calm her; but she only cried harder in response, because she could tell they were just as scared as she was, and that was the worst thing of all.

From within the the hollowed-out shell of their home, the little family watched in increasing shock and horror as the inhabitants of the city turned on one another. Looting, fires, and outright brawls were a common sight for the next several days, until finally there was no one left to heap abuses on each other. Her parents tried to eke out an existence as best they could on the paltry amounts of food, water, and clothing that remained, but each day spent trying to stitch together something approaching a normal life was more of a struggle than the last.

Then one day they went to sleep, and they didn't wake up.

For hours she tried to rouse them, but they never responded to her frantic nudges, never answered her tearful calls for them to rise. Later, the girl would learn what death was, and wonder what it was that had killed them in the end, but for now the world was still – or was still _supposed_ to be – a good place, a magic place. Her parents slept on, their bodies stiff as planks of dry wood, their faces drained of all color.

The girl wondered if they dreamed of her.

She would have stayed there with them if she could, reciting every chant she had learned from the fairy tales she'd been read in her short life: spells and incantations that were supposed to return those who were asleep to the waking world. But a strange man had stormed into the house's remains one day, scaring her badly enough that she ran away, before winding up in a section of the city that she did not recognize. She had been wandering in circles forever now... in reality, it had only been a few days, but as the girl was only three years old, she had little understanding of time.

She had not slept or eaten in all that time. Her eyelids fluttered intermittently, and a bothersome pressure began to build up in her skull, but she resolved never to succumb to her body's call for rest. After all, there was no guarantee that she would ever wake up; and should such a thing happen, who would be there to wake up her parents? Similarly, she had no desire to eat. The girl's stomach ached terribly from the lack of nourishment, but she felt no hunger at all – only a tremendous need to keep moving, to find her way home. Even if she looked for food, she wouldn't have found it.

It was only when a shadow fell over her that she looked up.

The shadow's owner was a figure without a face. Ordinarily the girl would have put it down to a monster and fled, but her survival instincts were very muted and instead she just stared at it. After a few uncomprehending moments, she realized that it was human-shaped, with traces of light hair blowing around the area where its face was supposed to be. Yet she did not feel a great deal better for knowing that she was looking at a person and not a creature from her nightmares.

Her arms wrapped around her body tighter, as she shivered with fear as well as cold. Meanwhile, the figure continued to stand there, like an imperturbable force of nature, solid and unassailable. It also remained utterly motionless: the only movements to be found on its person were those of the torn sheets that covered it, which simultaneously fanned out from its back. As the sheets twisted every which way in the wind, the girl saw that the figure had broad shoulders and was tall like her Daddy... so "it" was probably a "he." She wasn't completely certain, however, as the sheets kept the figure's face covered.

The object of her musings made a forward movement just then, causing her to step back, cringing; but the movement had only consisted of slowly kneeling down on one knee. The person extended a hand towards her, held it there. The hand was as heavily adorned with bandages as the person was with sheets. He said nothing, but that was probably for the best – the wind was so fierce that he wouldn't have been heard unless he yelled, and _that_ would most certainly cause the girl to bolt in terror. She stood before him, undecided.

_Don't talk to strangers,_ Daddy had told her. _Don't ever go anywhere with someone you don't know,_ Mommy had said. Even after they had gone to sleep, she continued to abide by their words, running and hiding whenever she saw someone approaching. The girl knew she should probably run now, but something kept her rooted to the spot.

The stranger's hand was still extended towards her. It seemed that he would wait there forever if he had to, until she either took his hand or turned and fled.

If she went with the stranger, bad things would happen, she knew – but then, maybe she didn't care if bad things happened to her, not when she was all alone in the world and Mommy and Daddy were still sleeping, perhaps forever. And yet, at the same time, she longed for _some_ kind of human company, even if it was a longing she didn't fully understand.

Motivated by these contradicting desires, she reached out and took the stranger's hand.

_Whatever will be, will be. _That was another thing Mommy liked to say, and it was this phrase that danced through her head as the stranger slowly drew her closer to himself, until finally she was pressed up against his body. It had the same effect as curling up next to a crackling fireplace in the dead of night; warmth instantly flooded her body, and she instinctively huddled closer to the source. She was vaguely aware of a sheet being drawn over her, of an arm wrapping around her shoulders, completely shielding her from the chill.

If the girl had had any more tears left in her, she might have wept; but she had shed them all when she lost her parents. Instead, her eyes – overbright with grief and red from the strain of trying to stay awake – began to close.

Elizabeth slept.

* * *

><p>There was a tap on the door. Miriam rushed to answer it.<p>

It was an effort to swing the door upward, as the winds were strong enough that they kept it more or less anchored to the floor. A miracle the entire church was still standing, really. The last time she'd seen wind this bad was when a sudden sandstorm had accosted the monastery. She had been in the inner courtyard, following the patterns of a prayer walk that had been traced in the sand, when it was suddenly blown away by gale force winds. She had raced inside before one of the bricks could come loose from the church's structure and strike her in the head.

The wind today had arrived just as suddenly, and she was sick with worry. Alex had gone out to try and find supplies that they needed, such as batteries and blankets. (Miriam had also asked him to bring back a mattress if possible, but she doubted Alex would honor her request, as the mattress was supposed to be for him; the nun was well and truly tired of watching him sleep on the floor night after night.) She had long since stopped asking if she could accompany Alex on these trips. He always insisted on going alone.

She regretted her decision now. It was shortly after he left this morning that the weather had turned inclement, and she had not seen him all day. _Who knows what might have happened..._

She got the door fully open, and a booted foot plunged down and held it in place before it could swing closed again. She opened her mouth to yell at its owner – through yet another miracle, things had grown comfortable enough between them that she could level snarky remarks at him without fear of retribution – but the howling of the wind drowned out any admonishments she might have called forth. Instead, Alex merely stood and waited for Miriam to move aside. She did so, grudgingly, and he smoothly descended the staircase.

"So what took so long, anyway?" she said, as he began to shrug off the heavy robes that he used as cover whenever he went scavenging. "I was worried half to death that something happened."

"I got held up," Alex replied vaguely.

Miriam looked over at the duffel bag that he had set down before disrobing. "I don't suppose there's a mattress stuffed in there, is there?" she said, only half in jest.

"Shh," Alex said, stopping long enough to place a finger to his lips. There was an uncharacteristic maternity to the gesture. "You'll wake her."

"Her?" Miriam walked over to the bag and peered inside. "Oh, goodness, Alex. Don't tell me that you brought back a pet – _oh!"_ She had pulled back the opening flap all the way and was amazed to see a child nestled comfortably inside, sleeping. In a whispered but frantic voice, she said, "Where did you find her? Was she alone? Where are her parents?" Then, lifting the child out and placing a hand to her forehead: _"Alex!_ She's freezing! I'm going to set up a hot bath for her."

She hurried to the bathroom, suddenly a perpetually put-upon matron. Supporting the child in the crook of one arm, she used the other to draw bath water. The child stirred slightly, but was otherwise dead to the world.

"Well, to answer the first of your_ many_ questions," Alex sighed, following her, "I found her in the industrial district. When the winds started up, I was on my way back here. I was running the buildings – " _running _was the term he and Miriam used to describe his newfound penchant for leaping from building to building to avoid being seen by enemies – "and I happened to look down and see her. She was alone and suffering from the cold – "

Miriam glared at him, and he went on to add in an injured tone, _"Not_ my fault. Anyway, she was by herself. As for where her parents were..." He looked away. "I'm pretty sure she's an orphan."

The nun's glare turned into an expression of open sorrow. She clutched the child tighter to her bosom. "How did you get her to come with you?" she asked slowly.

"I didn't really think about it," he replied, just as slowly. "I just kind of... walked up to her, and she came with me."

There was silence but for the running of the bath water. After a moment Alex sighed again and turned away.

"I'm going to turn in," he said, resuming his customary sleeping position on the floor. He added: "Sorry I couldn't find anything we could use."

"You've done more than enough," she told him. "You've managed to save a life."

Alex gave a slight inclination of his head, but did not look especially proud of himself. He closed his eyes.

"At least use my bed," the nun said, chagrined, but Alex was already asleep. Or maybe just pretending to be asleep. His chest rose and fell with silent breaths, as his head rested in the crook of his single arm. Miriam had no idea how he could be comfortable in that position.

Once the tub had finished filling, Miriam undressed the child with deliberate slowness, hoping that she would come around. After a few moments, the girl's eyes fluttered open, and she leveled a flat stare at the nun. Miriam evinced some surprise at this, remembering that a few weeks – now a lifetime – ago, she had been charged with taking care of children just like this one. The possibility that she might not truly be up for the task flitted through her mind, but she put it down. Her old insecurities were irrelevant now. It would just be plain selfish to let them take hold.

"Hello," she said quietly. "What is your name?"

The girl said nothing. Miriam tried again.

"Where are your parents?" she asked, picking up a bottle of soap and pouring its contents into the tub, creating a bubble bath.

The girl averted her gaze. "They said never talk to strangers," she mumbled.

"That's very good advice," Miriam said. It was advice she wished she had heeded over ten years ago, in fact. There was a pregnant pause, as she found herself unable to go on. Then: "But we aren't strangers. We're your friends."

"You are?" the girl said, raising her head now. "There's more o' you?"

"Yes." Miriam smiled at her. "It's me and Alex here."

The girl looked past the open door, saw Alex sleeping on the floor. She tipped her head to one side.

"He was the one wh'got me. Did he brung me here?"

Her childlike speech fascinated Miriam. She had not heard its like for years now. She nodded. "Yes, that's Alex. And my name is Sister Miriam."

The child's reply was automatic. "But you're not my sister," she said, her big green eyes wide with puzzlement. "I don't have no sisters or brothers."

"Well... it's sort of a title, actually," Miriam said, and then she kicked herself mentally. _Idiot! She can't be more than three. _"I'm... sort of like everyone's sister. I guess. You can call me Sister, if you want. Now what's your name?"

With a pride that would be absurd if it were not coming from a child, the girl clearly enunciated: "E-liz-a-beth."

"That is a very pretty name, Elizabeth," Miriam said. She gestured to the wall, where she had hung up the girl's dress. "And those were very pretty clothes you were wearing. I saw a lot of bows on them. Do you like bows?" As she spoke, Miriam made a note to clean and patch up the clothes on the morrow.

"Uh-huh." Elizabeth nodded, her face tight. Then something like desperation shone in her eyes. "Nee-san, my Mommy and Daddy fell asleep. They wouldn't wake up. Can you tell me what happened to 'em? ...Nee-san, why are your eyes all wet?"

Miriam swallowed hard, brushed away the tears that stood in her eyes. It was just as Alex had said... "We'll talk more about that later," she said. "I promise. But for now, just eat and let me clean you up."

The girl was quiet. In another lifetime she might have thrown a fit until she got the answers that she wanted, but the last few weeks had taken a terrible toll on her body and soul. She mutely consumed the juice and crackers that Miriam gave to her, before the nun set to work softly scrubbing her hair and skin, casting off every inch of dirt that covered her body. While the child had suffered enormously, the nun swore that she would do all in her power to make sure she was safe and comfortable here.

When the bath was over, Miriam put one of her own shirts on the girl. _Oh, Lord,_ Miriam thought as the girl tried to walk in it without stumbling. _That shirt was too big even for me. It looks like a tent on her. _She was going to have to ask Alex to get some clothes for her on his next trip out. She placed the girl in one of the many child-sized chairs scattered around the basement and knelt down, began to brush out her wet hair with a fine-toothed comb.

"Nee-san," Elizabeth said. "Can we talk 'bout my parents now?"

Miriam stiffened, but continued to comb the girl's hair. "Your parents are..." How could one put such a terrible truth to her gently? "Your parents are in Heaven," she said finally, firmly.

"What's Heaven? How'd they get there?"

"Well, when someone goes to sleep and doesn't wake up, their... their souls fly there," Miriam said. "Heaven is a place in the sky that they go to. It's too high up for you or me to follow." When you put it _that _way, it sounded ridiculous. Miriam blanched. Nuns weren't supposed to have thoughts like that. "Someday you will go to Heaven too," she said, trying to placate the child with gentle reassurances.

"But... what _is _Heaven?" Elizabeth pressed.

How did one describe Heaven? Miriam didn't really know herself, beyond stained glass depictions of golden harps and pearly gates; and she had never put much stock in those. She was about to reply, when Alex's voice suddenly interjected.

"Heaven is the land of angels," he said, sitting up slowly. He closed his eyes. "Someone told me that a long time ago... I don't remember who, though."

"Nii-san! You're awake!" the girl said, something like happiness showing in her voice for the first time. She tried to get up and go to him.

"Oh, honey," Miriam said, keeping a hand on the girl's shoulder. "I think he's tired. He's been out and about all day."

"It's okay," Alex said mildly. "I'm pretty much awake now, anyway."

Miriam had her doubts. But at that moment, a voice as soft as a desert breeze seemed to whisper in her mind. _Suffer the children. _Without another word, she released her hold on the girl.

Elizabeth clambered into Alex's lap, and to Miriam's surprise, he did not stiffen or seem uncomfortable in any way. "Can you tell me more 'bout Heaven?" she asked.

"Heaven is a place where people never steal, or hurt each other, or tell lies," he said with an equally surprising deftness. He was certainly much better versed on the subject than _she _was. "There is no desert, and the land is covered in green grass. There is food and water for everyone. In Heaven, there are nothing but peaceful days."

"So... am I gonna go to Heaven when I go to sleep?" Elizabeth asked, sounding both fearful and excited.

Alex briefly hesitated. "Hopefully, not for a very long time," he said. "All good girls go to Heaven eventually," he added, as an afterthought.

"But what if I'm bad?" the girl asked, her eyes growing watery. "I won't get to see Mommy and Daddy?"

"You shouldn't worry about that. I think you're a very good girl," Alex said, and he placed his hand on her head.

Miriam rose to her feet, astonished. She had never witnessed this side to Alex. It was as though another piece of the puzzle that was him had just fallen into place. Her heart warmed considerably. _Maybe this will help him remember. From the way he's acting, I wouldn't be surprised if he had children of his own..._

Then something happened to completely break the mood.

Elizabeth was openly goggling at Alex's stump. "Nii-san," she breathed, awed. "Where'd your arm go?"

_Ohhh, dear. _Miriam had no idea how to address the question; and even less idea of how Alex would deal with it. Therefore, she was completely shocked when he replied, in a complete monotone:

"A sandworm ate it."

_"Really? _A san' worm?"

"Yep," he affirmed quietly. "There I was, standing in the middle of the desert, minding my own business, when he just tore out of the ground and started chomping on me." And then his face twisted into an expression that Miriam had never seen on him before. He was pretending to be a sandworm. His eyebrows came together and he bared his teeth and weird – _snarfling _– noises came out of his mouth. He looked totally ridiculous.

Elizabeth was eating it up. She pressed two fists against her mouth in horror. "What'd you _do,_ Nii-san?"

"I did what any man would do. I started punching him in the nose until he dropped my arm." He delivered an impressive right hook into thin air. "But then I saw that it was all icky, so I just let him have it. He slunk off, totally beaten." He sat back and nodded, as though satisfied with himself.

"Wow," Elizabeth said. "Was there lots of blood n' stuff?"

"Oh yeah," Alex said, and Miriam thought she would faint. "But it all turned out okay in the end." He smiled at her.

_Really _smiled. It was another expression Miriam had never seen on his face. Today was just full of surprises, it seemed.

He looked so beautiful when he smiled like that.

Elizabeth yawned.

"I guess you're ready to go back to sleep," Alex said, and the smile faded from his face. He was all business again, the nun noted with dismay.

Elizabeth rubbed her eyes. "Yeah... sleepy..."

Without another word, Alex lifted her up like a sack of flour and put her in Miriam's bed. For a child who had seen and suffered much, she dropped off to sleep quickly enough. Alex went over to join the nun, who stood with her arms crossed.

"I think I'll cook," Miriam said after a moment, and she abruptly turned and walked into the kitchen area. Alex followed her.

"But you don't cook," he said. "If I recall, all you do is live on that coffee of yours."

Was that supposed to be a joke? Miriam scoffed. "This is a special enough occasion, don't you think? And for your information, buster, I happen to be a _very_ good cook." She began pulling several canned ingredients out of a pantry below the stove. "I don't mince words: just onions." There. Let him try to top _that _one.

Alex groaned.

Miriam put the stove on, drew her hair back into a ponytail, and washed her hands. "So..." she said, watching the precious water spill over her fingers. "Did you mean those things you said?"

"What things?"

"You know," she prodded, and she turned the faucet off. "About Heaven."

Alex looked pensive, and at first the nun was convinced that he wasn't going to say anything. Then: "I don't know. Maybe. Not really." He shrugged.

Miriam blinked at the non-answer. "Well," she said, trying a different tack, "is anything about your old life coming back to you? You mentioned a person."

"The harder I try to remember, the more faded the details become. I think it was..." Alex closed his eyes, his brow furrowed in deep concentration. "A woman. Like... my mother, but... also, _not _like my mother." He opened his eyes, looking genuinely distressed; and Miriam was saddened. She began opening the cans of food and mixing the ingredients together in a large pan that sat over an open flame.

"What are you making, anyway?" Alex leaned over to take a closer look at the pan, uncomfortably invading her space; and Miriam almost knocked the pan over as her hand, which had reached out to grasp a spatula, suddenly swept off course to avoid brushing his own.

"Could you please not do that," she said tersely, and Alex immediately backed off. "Sorry, sorry," he said, raising his one arm in mock surrender. Miriam almost grew angry, but realized that he wouldn't have any clue why she didn't want to be touched, since she had not deigned to tell him anything about the Bad Days.

And, with luck, never would.

"It's hash," she said, as in apology. She nodded at an assortment of spices on the counter. "Could you bring me those, please?"

* * *

><p>An hour later, and the meal was done. Miriam roused Elizabeth and the two of them went to sit at the child's table – or at least, Elizabeth sat, while the adults knelt. She obediently closed her eyes and clasped her hands together as Miriam said a prayer of thanksgiving. Then, they began to tuck in. Elizabeth ate as if she hadn't eaten in weeks – which, the nun reflected, was probably pretty close to the truth.<p>

Alex paused after one bite. "This _is _really good," he conceded. "It's amazing what you did with all canned ingredients."

"Thank you, Nee-san," Elizabeth added, her mouth full.

Miriam was gratified... and she felt something else, as well. For long moments she could not put a name to it, and then she realized what it was. Happiness. It was something she hadn't felt even when she was living with the nuns, devoting herself to her prayers and her domestic duties and (in secret, of course) her reading. And now here, in this broken city, living in a basement, she had found it. The feeling was so strong that it was almost uncomfortable. After all, social interaction – normal, _human _interaction – was something that had been denied to her, even though she never felt that God owed her that. It was enough that He had rescued her from...

Enough. She was going to start thinking about the past if she went down that route. She spoke to interrupt the voice that was beginning to drum itself up, loud and insistent, in the back of her mind.

"The winds seemed have died down a bit," she said, affecting a smile. "Maybe I should go upstairs and see if that grand piano is tuned. Then I could play you some music when dinner is through."

"Cooking _and _playing," Alex said, bemused. "Are there any other secret talents I should know about?"

"I suppose that's for me to know and you to find out," Miriam returned good-naturedly.

"I wanna hear songs, Nee-san," Elizabeth said. She had finished her plate and held it out to the nun. "But c'n I eat more first?"

"Sure," Miriam laughed softly, taking the plate and scooping more hash onto it. Then she rose, placed her own plate in the kitchen sink, and went upstairs.

The first thing she became aware of upon rejoining the outside world was the terrible red light that filtered down from the sky. She only knew that evening was drawing near because her watch told her so. However, the winds had indeed died down: they blew her clothes around only to a marginal degree. Ignoring the red sky – or trying to, anyway – she kept her head down and went over to the grand piano, situated in a corner of the sanctuary. There were multiple chairs surrounding it, meant for the likes of a church choir; but Miriam guessed (not quite correctly) that they would never serve that function again.

She examined the piano. It seemed to be in tip-top condition, but she wanted to try it out first. She sat down and began to play a rushed medley of her favorite songs, songs that she'd been drawn to during her time at the monastery: "His Eye is on the Sparrow," "The Gift of Love," and "The Lord of the Dance." (The sheet music for "The Lord of the Dance" she had discovered and learned in secret, as the nuns did not approve of dancing, or songs that advocated dancing.) That done, she stood up.

For absolutely no reason that she could think of, she did not go back downstairs. Instead, her eyes were drawn to the darkening shadows cast by the looming figure of the motorcycle that she had stolen from the Shadows. It lay idle on its side, taking up a good chunk of space along one of the church pews. "Angelina," she said aloud, walking over to it. She knelt down and moved her hands along the smooth surface of the bars, marveling. She could still remember the feelings of exhilaration – muted as they were beneath those of terror – that first time riding it. _No, not it – **her. **_Even now she could still feel them swell in her breast. There had been a sense of power there that she'd never possessed before, and she didn't want to let that go.

Alex had wanted to junk the motorcycle for fuel and scrap parts, but Miriam had forbid it. Maybe that was stupid. After all, she was a nun; and before that, a helpless, helpless _(doll)_ girl. How could someone like her ever commandeer such a vehicle? She didn't even know what _kind _of motorcycle this was.

Regardless, she wheeled the motorcycle out into the aisle, sat astride it.

She closed her eyes. "Fly," she whispered.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, down below, Alex and Elizabeth had finished eating and were playing hide and seek.<p>

As could be expected when one of the game's participants was a grown man, Elizabeth was the one who did the hiding. There was a surprisingly high number of places to hide in the church basement: especially with Miriam's most recent furnishings and renovations. Still, Alex was able to find her more often than not, mostly due to the fact that the ends of Elizabeth's shirt protruded like puppy tails wherever she chose to hide.

This time, however, he was actually stumped. She wasn't hiding under the table where they'd taken their dinner, or in the bathroom, or in the kitchen pantry. Nor had she squeezed herself behind the massive bookcase, as she'd creatively chosen to do on her first hiding attempt. He was about to declare his intention to give up when –

"There!" he yelled, whirling around and pointing. He had sensed the girl's tip-toeing movements behind him, and she froze like a deer that had been elected for target practice.

"N-no! Nii-san!" Elizabeth sputtered when she realized she'd been spotted, but her protestations were no use: Alex pounced on her with a speed and strength that belied his gaunt appearance. She employed the typical three-year old tactics for evasive action – namely, kicking him in the face and then rolling away like a dodgeball – but he recovered quickly, knocking over an endtable full of books as he lunged forward to grab the neck of her shirt. Crowing with triumph, he used his remaining arm to hold her aloft, while Elizabeth continued to struggle vainly.

"Why'd you leave your hiding place?" he asked her, laughing, still not surrendering his grip on the neck of her shirt. "I was about to give up, you know."

Elizabeth stopped squirming just then, and her face grew beet-red.

"B-because," she said, her voice contrite, her head lowered as though in shame, "I h-had t'pee..."

Upon hearing those words, Alex was suddenly, sickly aware of a damp warmth coating his leg. Willing himself to keep his gaze from traveling downward – but unable to comply, all the same – he soon confirmed his suspicions of just what it was that had spilled on him.

Elizabeth's voice was barely audible. "...Sorry, Nii-san..."

With a shriek of horror, Alex fell backwards, striking the floor with enough force to make the whole place shake. Seconds later, Elizabeth landed on top of him harmlessly.

Hide and seek was over, but the clear loser of the game had emerged.

* * *

><p>The two adults sat side by side, tension crackling between them like an electric current. One wore a stony expression and slowly turned her rosary over and over in her fingers, as though contemplating the spiritual consequences of murder, while the other tried not to look guilty and failed. Inside the bathroom, Elizabeth was as happy as a clam, maintaining an eternal tenor of giggles as she liberally splashed water out of the tub she was sitting in.<p>

"I go upstairs for five minutes and already you start a ruckus," Miriam sighed, wearily running a hand through her hair. "First you two make a complete mess of my home playing your silly games, and then the girl manages to – to _urinate _on you – "

Alex looked sheepish.

"But, you know." Miriam drew her hand away just then, turned to look at him. The anger had faded from her face somewhat. "I guess I'm kind of glad for that."

Alex blinked at her owlishly, surprised beyond measure. "Huh? You mean that?"

"I always had you pegged as such a serious young man," she said, smiling. "But you're really just a big goof, aren't you?"

"I don't know," he said, looking away, shrugging. "I just like kids is all."

"But that's not something you knew about yourself before, right?" Miriam pressed on. "Admit it: meeting Elizabeth has helped you rediscover a part of your identity."

"I guess you're right," he said after a moment, turning back to her. "But what does that mean? That I was some kind of circus clown before all this?"

"You said it, not me," she said, laughing. "Besides, it would certainly match the acrobatic profile." Then her face grew serious. "I think I just realized something."

"What is it?"

"Well... you know how that gang was made up of kids?"

"Yes," Alex replied warily. Any mention of the Shadows invariably served to darken his mood.

"Well," she said again, trying to bring her thoughts in order. "Have you ever seen another living adult in this city? Anywhere at all?"

At first he stared at her, not getting it. Then he said, _"Oh._ ...No, I haven't."

"This city is like a graveyard. No matter where either of us went, we never saw anyone like – like us. But we've both seen children." She brought a hand to her forehead, pushed sweaty bangs out of her face. "I'm starting to think that most of the adults really _did _get away on the sand steamer, back then. The rest of them could have easily ended up like... Elizabeth's parents." She brought her train of thought to its logical conclusion. "I think... I think it's the children who have inherited Lost July."

An uneasy silence passed between them. "We have to save them," Alex said at last. "We can't let them fend for themselves. This city will eat them alive."

"I agree with you," Miriam said. "But we need to have a plan." She drew out her map of July, placed it on the floor between them. "I've cordoned off each district of the city here," she said, pointing to her notes in marker. "We need to thoroughly investigate each district. Most of the kids may have joined gangs by now, but I bet a lot of them haven't. A lot of them are probably staying hidden, just trying to survive." Her voice lowered. "Alex, you're the only one who can get around without being seen. Would you be willing – ?"

"Of course," he said instantly, fiercely. "Of course I would."

"It's asking a lot of you, I know. I'll have to make preparations here so we can accommodate as many children as possible."

Alex nodded. "Just tell me where to go. I'll set off first thing in the morning."

"Then it's settled," Miriam said. "A rescue mission."

The two of them fell silent again as they pondered the grave implications of her discovery, and what they had to do. Alex's face was flushed and tight, while Miriam stared off into a distance that stretched far beyond the walls of the church. So many innocent children would be preyed upon – in more ways than one – if they did not act as soon as possible.

Elizabeth chose that moment to walk out of the bathroom, dripping wet and as naked as the day she was born. Both adults started; and Miriam quickly fetched a towel for the child while Alex found another shirt to put on her.

"It's bedtime for you, I think," Miriam said, as Elizabeth once again found herself waddling around in clothes that were too big for her.

"What 'bout songs?"

"I'll play for you tomorrow," Miriam said. "There's been too much excitement today."

Elizabeth didn't argue. The nun tucked her into her own bed, then changed into a set of clean, long-sleeved night clothes in the bathroom. The dirty dishes could wait until morning, she decided. Alex declined the use of the generator when Miriam asked if he wanted to wash up, and she turned it off. A set of matching flashlights on the nightstand next to her bed kept the room from being completely plunged into darkness. She gave one of the flashlights to Elizabeth to sleep with.

"I'm not 'fraid of the dark," Elizabeth declared, but the beam of the flashlight revealed uncertainty on her face. "...Nee-san'll sleep with me, won't you?" she asked.

"Yes, of course," Miriam said immediately, and she was surprised at how readily she had agreed to such a motherly gesture – she, whom had never laid eyes on a female under the age of forty for the last ten years. Taking care of children, she had discovered, seemed to be as natural as breathing. She crawled into the bed and placed her arms around the child, who in turn clutched the flashlight to her chest. Miriam murmured a soft prayer into her hair, and the two were asleep within a few minutes.

Alex watched them, his knees drawn up to his chest, reveling in the exchange. He felt that, whatever had transpired in his earlier life, it had never involved such sweet, simple scenes as this. The scars seemed to be rock-solid proof of that. Trying to fend off such dark reflections, he curled up on the floor. He felt the pangs of exhaustion that he had so far kept at bay suddenly sweep over him. His eyelids were heavy and he seemed suddenly as weak as a child. As he drifted off, he tried to remember the woman who had taught him about Heaven... the not-mother.

He fell into a thin, haunted sleep.

* * *

><p><em>Two things he knows. His left arm is nothing but a wisp of air – gone, but certainly not forgotten – and the boy's eyes are wrong.<em>

_The aforementioned eyes regard him with contempt, blazing out of a sallow, skin-stretched face. A wall of ice seems to descend upon him, and he realizes that he is in pain. Horrible pain. He does not even have the strength to moan. The boy – a teenager, judging from his lithe but solid build – merely stands over him and watches, makes no attempt to ease his condition. He feels himself fading in and out of consciousness, as though as he is being intermittently submerged beneath black tidal waves. Beneath all this, he dimly registers a low flutelike sound – almost as if someone is humming. It's the boy._

_Eventually his consciousness gains an uneasy foothold, and more details bleed into the picture in front of him. He is finally aware that he is lying on the ground. It used to be a floor, but no longer: now it is a bed of dirt, and mud, and broken glass, and other things that his mind cannot yet grasp but which are certainly better left unconsidered. _

_He tries to lift his head, but a jolt of pain shoots down his neck; and now the pain is so bad that he really **can** make a sound: a faint gurgle that bubbles out of his throat, but which does not quite pass his lips. _

_"You poor thing," the boy says._

_His voice is as contemptuous as his eyes: eyes that are glowing a strange... what? Yellow? Bronze? No, that can't be right..._

_"I would like to say that I feel some measure of pity for you," the boy goes on to say in a soft, lilting voice. "And yet I can do nothing other than to wish that you had suffered the same fate as my Master."_

_Despite the gentleness of the boy's voice and his own detached, barely-there assessment of the reality unfolding before him, horror blossoms in his heart. The boy's eyes are unblinking, cold, even as that impossible color continues to burn in them – the color of pure, burnished gold. __"Behold the destruction that you have wrought, then. You monster." The humming continues, even as the boy is speaking; and yet, indisputably, the boy is the source of that sound. He knows this._

_He is terrified._

_The humming grows broader, morphs into an infinitely more menacing sound – the harsh buzz of a colony of insects – as shapes begin to rise in the air. There are three of them. They look – they look – what's the word –_

_"Human?" the boys says, an eyebrow arched in amusement._

_Yes. That's right. Human._

_He instinctively accepts that the boy is able to perceive without hearing, to manipulate without touching; and yet that is not even the worst part. As the shapes rise higher into the air, silhouetted against a maroon sky that bears down through the holes of the exposed roof, he can see that two of them are –_

**_angels_**

_– women. They are naked and shivering, but alive and as full of terror as he is. Their eyes, wide and black and screaming, seem to take up their entire heads. Around their prone, floating bodies, an assortment of feathers slowly furls and unfurls. _

_"I'm taking them with me," the boy says firmly. "You are not to poison them with your blasphemy. And..." His eyes close, and for the first time he looks close to mourning. "I am taking my Master with me."_

_The final shape, previously obscured by the bodies of the women, comes into full view now. And he knows that if he could scream, he would be doing so – screaming until blood poured from his throat and his own eyes fell out of his head. The shape is unmistakably human, or human-esque; but it is covered in festering wounds, and a torrent of black slime remains in suspended animation around its body, like a child's crude imitation of the outline of a person. Charred tufts of hair continue to fall from its scarred, balding scalp. The high stink of rotted meat exudes from its porous skin. What is left of its chest rises and falls with rattling breaths. It is still alive.  
><em>

_"But I promise you this," the boy says, and the buzzing increases exponentially with the force of his anger. "One way or another, you will be punished for what you have done to your brethren. Some day, I will see to it that you experience eternal suffering."_

_And then he says his name. Relishes it, as only a person who desires to take vengeance upon another can. But he cannot even hear it, because the buzzing is loud –** so loud** – and it seems to take up residence in his entire head, until he must crash into a million little pieces, no different from the living corpse that descends on him now, screaming its soundless fury, its eyes transitioning from green to blue to golden green blue golden** golden golden golden** **–**_

* * *

><p>He awoke as though struck by lightning. His chest, which had been tightly drawn and bringing him closer to suffocation with every minute that he slept, exhaled a tense <em>whoosh,<em> and he bolted upright. He was surrounded by darkness on all sides, and for once, he was grateful for it.

He. Alex. Not a true name, but a name nonetheless; and he clung to it like a lifeline, as a means of separating the blessed _now_ from the horrid _then. _Knowing he was Alex meant that he was just one step further away from the product of his tortured mind: a dream where he had not even known who he was, a nightmare in which he was at the mercy of a merciless boy.

"What the hell was that?" he whispered, still shaking. He placed a sweaty palm to his forehead, tried to calm the beating of his heart. The dream... it had been so vivid. Like something that had really happened. There'd been talk of destruction, and punishment, and he'd seen women with wings –

_Plants? There were **plants** in my dream?_

But then, there was also that psychic boy, or something... damn it. He was already beginning to forget the details. What had seemed like a vision piped directly into his brain from hell moments before was now beginning to become all jumbled up in his mind, like a ruined puzzle.

He'd heard of sleeping rough, but this was pretty _damn _rough.

He made a fist and smacked it against his temple. "Who the hell am I?" he asked himself in a fierce whisper. Then he remembered just where exactly he was – in a_ church_, with a nun and a three-year-old – and that he probably shouldn't be using such language, even if they _were _asleep. He definitely didn't want to receive another tongue-lashing from Miriam in the morning. In spite of her sweet nature, he sometimes swore that the girl had a steel rod in place of where her spine was supposed to be. There were other things that he wondered about her, too, but he supposed those mysteries would be resolved in due time.

Furtively, he peered across the dark room. Even though the flashlights had all been turned off, he could still see moderately well. Which only served to remind him of what a freak he was. Great. He saw Miriam lying in the bed in the corner, sound asleep. And Elizabeth was –

– not there.

He stared into the crook of Miriam's arms, puzzled. His exceptional ears picked up a sound at that moment. It was so faint as to be nearly imperceptible; but with a little straining, he could definitely make out the sound of a child's soft whimpers. Without another thought as to what had transpired, he arose and headed for the source.

Moments later, and he had found her. She sat in a corner of the darkened room, clutching the flashlight Miriam had given her to sleep with, still dressed in the nun's overlarge shirt. Soundless, pitiable sobs issued from her throat, while her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, holding back the floodgate of tears that still yet remained in her – tears she had been unable to shed before, but which she could hardly stop herself from producing now that the gravity of her circumstances had truly sunken in.

"N-nii-san..." she said when he had drawn close enough for her to take notice of him. "I m-miss... Mommy and Daddy..." Her face was twisted into an expression of utmost agony, as though her body were being assaulted with physical blows, leaving bruises that were invisible but no less indelible.

He knelt in front of her, spoke in soothing tones. "It's okay to cry, you know."

With an enormous effort, she shook her head. "Don't w-wanna wake... Nee-san..."

Watching her struggle to stay taciturn, Alex felt a lump rise in his throat; whatever the cause of the impressive network of scars that had been carved into his body, it couldn't be more painful than what he was seeing now. He took the flashlight from her and placed it on the floor next to her, before sitting down on the floor himself, his back braced against the wall. "Come here," he said gently; and when she began to stumble toward him, he drew her into his lap, just as gently, with his remaining arm.

"Put your head here," he said, tapping his chest. Elizabeth obeyed: the moment her cheeks, hot and fevered and wet with the tears that she had not been able to conceal, came to rest against him he could instantly feel them soaking his sweatshirt through. His arm encircled her tiny form protectively, his hand covering the top of her head.

"There," he told her. "Now, you can cry as much as you want, and I'll be the only one who hears. Okay?"

For a moment there was silence. Then Elizabeth began to wail: long, little-girl howls that shook her entire body, created a darkly expanding puddle of tears on his shirt. Alex patiently held her, understanding that it could take hours for the grief to run its course; and even then, the hurt would always still be there, threatening to swallow her whole in moments when it was hardly expected. He rubbed her back, not saying anything, just letting her cry. Occasionally she would drop off to sleep, only to rouse herself and begin the cycle all over again. When at last it seemed she would stay asleep for the remainder of the night, her fingers still clutching helplessly at his shirt, he shifted her weight in his arm and tried to decide what to do next.

While he certainly had no intention of leaving her there on the floor alone, Alex was surprised to find that he didn't want to return her to Miriam, either. Somehow, at some point, he had fully accepted the role that she had thrust upon him in her childlike trust and acceptance of him. And he realized something else, too: he loved her, just as a brother loves his sister. "I'm sorry, Elizabeth," he said in a pained whisper, feeling responsible in some way for the terrible loss she had suffered.

Presently, Alex nudged the flashlight away with his foot, then stretched the full length of his body out on the floor, using his arm to cushion Elizabeth, who snuggled against him in response. Keeping it firmly wrapped around her, he then proceeded to turn to less fitful – or what he hoped would be less fitful – dreams.

* * *

><p>AN: Headcanon strikes again. Yes, it's _that _Elizabeth. Since almost all the principal characters are going to be OC's, I decided to include another canon character in order for the story to bear more of a resemblance to the world of Trigun; and it still fits in anime canon, anyway. (Although it makes it really weird when Vash hits on her in Episode 6, but I didn't really think of that when I first wrote this [almost a year ago now,_ wow_]. Still, a lot of Vash's actions in the early episodes are so cryptic that I think a case could be made that he already knew Elizabeth was from July and was acting like a perverted idiot to throw her off his track.)

The "suffer the children" bit comes from Matthew 19:14, where Jesus admonishes the disciples for forbidding the children to come to Him to be blessed: _"But Jesus said, Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven."_


End file.
